The Hittite (21 page)

I reached the topmost platform of the tower, sword in hand. Our calculations had been almost perfect. The platform reared a shin’s length or so higher than the wall’s battlements. Without hesitation I jumped down onto the stone parapet and from there onto the wooden platform behind it.

A pair of stunned Trojan youths stood barely a sword’s length before me, their mouths agape, eyes bulging, long spears in their trembling hands. I rushed at them and cut the closer one nearly in half with a swing of my sword. The other dropped his spear and, screaming, jumped off the platform into the dark street below.

The sky was brightening. The city seemed asleep, but across the angle of the wall I could see another sentry on the platform, his long spear outlined against the gray-pink of dawn. Instead of charging at us he turned and ran toward the square stone tower that flanked the Scaean Gate.

“He’ll alarm the guard,” I said to Magro. “They’ll all be at us in a few moments.”

Magro nodded, his battle-hardened face showing neither fear nor anticipation.

It was now a race between Odysseos’ Ithacans and the Trojan guards. We had won a foothold inside the walls; now our job was to hold it. As my men swiftly broke out the spears and shields that we had roped to
the tower’s timbers, I glanced over the parapet. Fog and darkness still shrouded the plain. I couldn’t see Odysseos and his men in the shadows— if they were there.

A dozen Trojan guards spilled out of the watchtower, and I saw even more Trojans rushing toward us from the far side of the tower, running along the south wall, spears leveled. The battle was on.

My men had faced spears before, and they knew how to use their own. We formed a defensive wall by locking our shields together and put out a bristling hedgehog front with our long spears. I took a spear and butted my shield next to Magro’s, at the end of our line. I could feel my heart pounding; my palms were slippery with sweat.

The Trojans attacked us with reckless fury, practically leaping on our spear points. They fought to save their city. We fought for our lives. There was no way for us to retreat without being butchered. We either held our foothold on the wall or we died.

Our shield wall buckled under their ferocious attack. We were forced a step back, then another. A heavy bronze spear point crashed over the top of my shield, missing my ear by a finger’s width. I thrust my spear into the belly of that man: his face went from shocked surprise to the final agony of death in the flash of a heartbeat.

More Trojans were scrambling up the ladders to the platform, strapping armor over their nightclothes as they ran. These were the nobility, the cream of their fighting strength. I could tell from the gaudy plumes of the helmets they were putting on and the burnished bronze of their breastplates glinting in the light of the new day.

Farther off, archers were kneeling as they fired flaming arrows at our tower. Others fired at us. An arrow chunked into my shield. Another hit Harkan, two men down from me, in his leg. He staggered backward and let his shield drop. Instantly a Trojan drove his spear through Harkan’s unprotected chest.

Their archers began lofting their shots to get over our wall of shields. Flaming arrows fell among us. Men screamed and fell to the wooden flooring, their clothes and flesh on fire.

The barrage of arrows would quickly break our shield wall and what
was left of my men would go down under the weight of Trojan numbers. I felt a burning fury rise inside me, a rage against those archers who knelt a safe distance away and tried to kill us at their leisure. Call it battle fury, call it bloodlust, I felt a flame of hatred and rage that I had never experienced before.

“Hold here,” I shouted to Magro. Before he could do more than grunt I drove forward, surprising the Trojans in front of me. Grasping my spear in two hands, level with the floor, I pushed four of them off their feet and slipped between the others, dodging their clumsy thrusts as they half-turned to slash at me. I killed one of them; Magro and the rest of my men pushed forward and killed several more. The Trojans quickly turned back to face my advancing men.

I dashed toward the archers. Most of them turned and ran, although two of them stood their ground and managed to get off a pair of arrows at me. They thudded into my shield as I ran at the archers. I caught the first one on my spear, a lad too young to have more than the wisp of a beard. His companion dropped his bow and tried to pull out the dagger at his waist but I knocked him spinning with a swipe of my shield. He toppled off the platform screaming to the street below.

The other archers had retreated down the platform that ran along the battlements. The men of my squad were fighting the Trojan guards who had rushed them. For the span of a heartbeat I was alone. But only for that long. The Trojan nobles were charging along the platform toward me, a dozen of them, with more climbing the ladder behind them.

I hefted my long spear in one hand and threw it at the nearest man. Its heavy weight drove it completely through his shield and into his chest. He staggered backward into the arms of his two nearest companions.

I threw my shield at them to slow them down further, then picked up the bow from the archer I had slain. It was a beautiful, gracefully curved thing of horn and smooth-polished wood. But I had no time to admire its workmanship. I fired every arrow in the dead youth’s quiver as rapidly as I could, forcing the nobles to cower behind their body-length shields, holding them at bay for a precious few moments more.

Once the last arrow was gone and I threw down the useless bow, the leader of the nobles facing me lowered his shield enough for me to recognize his face: handsome young Paris, a sardonic smile on his almostpretty face.

“So the herald is a warrior after all,” he called to me, advancing toward me with leveled spear.

Sliding my sword from its sheath, I replied, “Yes. Is the stealer of women a warrior as well?”

“A better one than you,” Paris taunted.

Stalling for time, I said, “Prove it. Face me man to man, your spear against my sword.”

He glanced past me, at my men battling at the top of our siege tower. “Much as I would enjoy that, today is not the day for such pleasures.”

“Today is the last day of your life, Paris,” I said.

As if on cue, a piercing, blood-curdling war cry screeched from behind me. Odysseos!

Paris looked startled for a moment, then he yelled to his followers, “Clear the wall of them!”

The Trojans charged. They had to get past me before they could reach Magro and my men. A dozen spears against my one sword. I shifted to my left, wishing I hadn’t been foolish enough to throw away my shield. I barely avoided the first spear point aimed at my belly and hacked at another spear, cutting its haft almost in two with my iron blade. I backed away another step and then stepped back once more— onto empty air.

As I tottered on the edge of the platform another spear came thrusting at me. I banged its bronze head with the metal cuff around my right wrist, deflecting it enough to save my skin. But the motion sent me tumbling off the platform. I turned a full somersault in midair and somehow managed to land on my feet. The impact buckled my knees and I rolled on the bare dirt of the street. A spear thudded into the ground scant fingers’ widths from me. I saw a pair of archers aiming their arrows at me and ducked behind the corner of a house before they could fire.

Looking up, I could see, against the brightening morning sky, Paris and his men rushing along the wall toward the spot where the siege
tower stood. My undersized squad of Hatti soldiers were battling the Trojans while Odysseos and his men clambered over the wall’s battlements and joined the struggle. But dozens more Trojans, roused so rudely from their sleep, were scurrying up ladders and rushing along the platform to overwhelm them. We needed a diversion, something to draw off the Trojan reinforcements.

I sprinted down the narrow alley between houses until I found a door. I kicked it open. A woman screamed in sudden terror as I stamped in, sword in hand. She cowered in a corner of her kitchen, her arms around two small children who huddled against her, wide-eyed with fright. As I strode toward them they all shrieked and ran along the wall, screeching and skittering like mice, then bolted through the open door. I let them go.

A small cook fire smoldered in the hearth. I yanked down the flimsy curtains that separated the kitchen from the next room and tossed them into the fire. It flared into open flame. Then I smashed a wooden chair and fed it into the blaze. Striding into the next room, I grabbed straw bedding and threadbare blankets and added them to the fire.

Two houses, three, and then a whole row of them I set ablaze. People were screaming and shouting. Men and women alike raced toward the fire sloshing buckets of water drawn from the fountain at the end of the street.

Satisfied that the fire would grow and occupy more and more of the Trojans, I started up the nearest ladder to return to the battle on the platform. Achaians were pouring over the parapet now and the Trojans were giving way. I leaped at them from the rear, yelling out to Magro. He heard me and led what was left of my men to my side, cutting a bloody swath through the defending Trojans.

“The watchtower by the Scaean Gate,” I shouted, pointing with my reddened sword. “We’ve got to take it and open the gate.”

We fought along the length of the wall, meeting the ill-prepared Trojans as they came up in knots of five or ten or a dozen and driving away those we didn’t kill. The fire I had started was spreading to other houses now, a pall of black smoke hid the palace from our sight.

The watchtower was only lightly guarded: most of the Trojans were fighting against Odysseos and his Ithacans on the western wall. We broke into the guard room, using spear butts to batter down the door, and slaughtered the few men there. Then we raced to the ground and started to lift the heavy beams that barricaded the Scaean Gate. A wailing scream arose, and I saw that Paris and a handful of other nobles were racing down the stone steps of the tower toward us.

We had them on the horns of uncertainty now. If they allowed Odysseos to hold the western wall, the rest of the Achaians would enter the city that way. But if they concentrated on clearing the wall, we would open the gate and allow the Achaian chariots to drive into the city. They had to stop us at both places, and stop us quickly.

Archers began shooting at us, but despite them my men tugged and pushed to open the massive gate. Men fell, but the three enormous beams were slowly lifting, swinging up and away from the doors.

I ducked an arrow and saw Paris running toward me across the open square behind the gate.

“You again!” he shouted at me.

Those were his last words. He charged me with his spear. I dodged sideways, forced it down with my right forearm, and drove my iron sword through his bronze breastplate up to its hilt. As I yanked it out, bright red blood spattered over the golden inlays of his armor and I felt a mad surge of pleasure, battle joy that I had taken the life of the man who had caused this war.

Paris sank to the ground. I saw the light go out of his eyes. At that moment an arrow struck me on my left shoulder. I felt a sudden flare of pain. More annoyed than injured, I yanked it out and flung it to the ground.

Even as I did so, more Trojans came at me. But they stopped in their tracks as a great creaking groan of bronze hinges told me that the Scaean Gate was swinging open at last. A roar went up and I turned to see chariots plunging through the open gate, bearing down directly on me.

The Trojans scattered and I dived out of the way. Agamemnon was in the first chariot, spear raised triumphantly over the plume of his helmet.
His horses pounded over Paris’ dead body and the chariot bumped, then clattered on, chasing the fleeing Trojan warriors.

I stepped backward, dust from the charging chariots stinging my eyes, coating my skin, my clothes, my bloody sword. The battle lust in me began to ebb as I watched Paris’ mangled body tossed and crushed by chariot after chariot. Magro came up beside me, a gash on his cheek and more on both his arms. None of them looked serious, though.

“The battle’s over,” he said. “Now the slaughter begins.”

Suddenly I was bone weary. I leaned my back against the rough stone wall of Troy.

“You’re hurt,” Magro said.

“It’s not serious.” My shoulder was covered with blood, but the wound had already clotted.

The rest of my men gathered around me, each of them bleeding from wounds. There were only six of us now. They looked uneasy. Not frightened, but edgy, nervous.

“Now’s the time when soldiers collect their pay,” Magro said tightly.

Loot, he meant. Stealing everything you can carry. Raping the women and then putting the city to the torch.

“Go,” I said, realizing that I myself had set the first fire. “I’ll be all right. I’ll see you back at camp when the sun goes down.”

Magro touched his fist lightly to his chest, then turned to the four remaining men. “Follow me,” he commanded. “And remember: don’t take any chances. There are still plenty of armed men left alive. And some of the women will try to use knives on you.”

“Any bitch who tries to cut me will regret it,” growled Manetho, the oldest man of my squad.

“Any bitch who sees your ugly face will probably use her knife on herself!” Magro jeered.

They all laughed and marched off together. Five men. Out of my original twenty.

For a while I stood near the wall and watched the Achaian chariots and foot soldiers pour through the open, undefended gate. The smoke was getting thicker. I squinted up at the sky and saw that the sun had barely topped the wall. It was still early in the morning.

So it is done, I said to myself. The city has fallen. What ever gods the Trojans prayed to have done them no good. I felt no exultation, no joy at all. Killing a thousand men and boys, burning down a city that had taken so many generations to build, raping women and carrying them off into slavery— this is not triumph.

Slowly I pulled myself erect. The square before the gate was empty now, except for the mangled bodies of Paris and the other slain men. Up the rising main street, behind the first row of columned temples, I could see flames soaring into the sky, smoke billowing toward heaven. A sacrifice to the gods, I thought bitterly.

I looked down at what was left of Paris. We all die, prince of Troy. Your brothers have died. Your father is probably dying at this very moment.

But my sons still live. And my wife. I’ll take them to night. Whether Agamemnon agrees or not I will reclaim my sons and my wife and leave this cursed city.

Then I thought of Helen. Beautiful Helen who was the cause for this slaughter, the woman who used me as a messenger, who used all the men around her to do her bidding. But what else could she have done? How else would she have survived? She was fighting for her life, using the only weapons the gods had allowed her.

Where is she? Is she waiting in the temple of Aphrodite, as Odysseos told her to do?

I decided to find out.