The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus) (47 page)

Diomedes stepped on an outstretched hand, unable to prevent his weight crushing the Trojan’s knuckles against the hard stone beneath. The man groaned and pulled his arm away. Diomedes’s sword was at his throat in an instant, waiting for the eyes to flicker open and see the dozen armed men standing about him. Instead, the man turned over and draped his arm across the woman at his side.

‘Come on,’ Diomedes hissed to the others.

They navigated their way free of the remaining bodies and looked at the dark mass of the walls, just a short way off now. The dense ceiling of cloud acted like a shroud, choking the city streets in blackness and making it impossible to see whether there were any soldiers on the Scaean Gate or the tower above. Even after a night of drunken victory celebrations it was unlikely there would be no guards at all, so Diomedes decided to approach with caution. He signalled for Philoctetes and Teucer to join him, then, telling the others to wait, led the two archers down to the gates. They crept from doorway to doorway until they reached the corner of a mud hovel, from which they could see the tall wooden portals and the guard tower that had repulsed every attack that had ever been thrown at them. The battlements above the gates had been removed stone by stone – just as Odysseus had said they would be if the horse was to be dragged into the city – leaving a wide, ugly gap in the walls. The gates were firmly shut and barred, though, and in the shadows beneath the tower stood four guards armed with helmets, shields and spears.

‘You see them?’ Diomedes asked.

His companions nodded.

‘We have to take them quietly. If just one of them raises the alarm, the rest of the guard will empty out of the tower and prevent us taking the gates. And if they wake the rest of the city, we’ll never be able to cut our way out again.’

‘We understand,’ said Philoctetes, sliding an arrow from his quiver and fitting it to Heracles’s horn bow. ‘We shoot a man each, then draw another arrow, aim and shoot again before the remaining guards realise what’s happening.’

‘And if we miss with either shot,’ Teucer added, ‘we alert the Trojans, get ourselves massacred and lose the war.’

Diomedes nodded and gave an apologetic shrug. Teucer grinned at him, then knelt, drew two arrows and pushed one into the ground. The other he fitted to his bow, pulling it back to his cheek and aiming along its long black shaft.

‘Back right,’ he whispered.

‘Back left,’ Philoctetes answered, ‘then front left. Now!’

The bowstrings hummed and Diomedes saw the two men closest to the gate jerk and fall. His heart beat fast and his throat thickened as he watched the remaining guards turn in surprise, then run towards their comrades. The bows hummed in unison a second time and the last two Trojans fell on top of the two who had died only moments before them.

‘Shots worthy of Apollo himself,’ Diomedes commented with relief, patting Philoctetes and Teucer on their shoulders. ‘Now stay here while I fetch the others. And shoot anyone who approaches the gates.’

He stood to leave, but a hissed warning from Philoctetes brought him back into the shadows. Once again, both bows sounded. Diomedes stared about in confusion, then caught sight of a body falling from the summit of the tower. It turned once in midair before hitting the ground with a crunch where the other corpses already lay. The Argive king scanned the tower and the broad parapets for more guards, but could see none. Then, with a quick nod of gratitude to the watchful archers, he turned again and headed back to where Little Ajax and the others were waiting. They saw him coming and went to meet him. Together they ran down to the gates, passing the humped shapes of many sleeping Trojans who would never now see the light of dawn. They passed Philoctetes and Teucer, still poised with arrows fitted, and sprinted the final stretch to the gates, as if afraid a company of warriors might leap out at the last moment and block their way. But no-one saw them as they jumped the pile of bodies and reached the wooden doors; no-one heard as they lifted away the bar and let it fall with a crash onto the cobblestones; and no-one cried out as they hauled the heavy portals back on their hinges to reveal the dark landscape beyond. And as they peered out into the gloom, no-one was there to meet them.

‘Where are they?’ Omeros asked. ‘Perhaps they didn’t see the signal. By all the gods, they must still be in the ships!’

Diomedes stared out at the land between the walls and the River Scamander, where the only feature was the sacred oak beneath which Achilles had fought and killed Hector. Had that really only happened in the spring, he thought, momentarily distracted. Was it now only the eighth month of the year? And where was the army, now that victory was so close? Had they missed the signal and, believing the occupants of the horse lost, set their sails towards Greece?

‘Agamemnon! Where are you?’ Little Ajax called. ‘The gates are open – what are you waiting for?’

There was desperation in the short, brutal warrior’s voice that made it carry out into the void. It filled Diomedes with the sudden fear he would rouse any nearby Trojans, and quickly he raised the point of his sword to Ajax’s throat.

‘Quiet, damn you!’ he hissed. ‘Are you trying to wake every soldier in Troy?’

In a deft move, Little Ajax twisted away from Diomedes’s blade and brought his own weapon up to meet it with a ringing clash. Then, all around them, the darkness began to shift. Black figures rose up from the ground, first in their scores, then in their hundreds, as if the souls of the dead were rising from the pits of Hades. Diomedes and Little Ajax forgot their quarrel and stepped back as the army of wraiths closed about them from the plain. Slowly, their pale faces and limbs became clearer, and one by one they slipped the black cloths from their shields and breastplates so that the metal and leather shone with a dull lustre in the darkness. Last of all they raised the points of their spears or drew their swords with a metallic slither, forming a wall of bronze about the open gates. The Greek army had arrived, and the sleeping city lay exposed before them.

Two figures approached from the massed ranks, the plumes on their helmets waving gently in the soft night breeze.

‘It worked! It actually worked,’ declared Agamemnon, with muted triumph. ‘Zeus be praised!’

‘And Odysseus, too,’ Diomedes reminded him. ‘His brains have succeeded where the might of Achilles and Great Ajax failed.’

‘We haven’t succeeded yet,’ said Nestor, standing at the King of Men’s side. ‘There’ll be much bloodshed before this battle’s over.’

‘But it’s the
last
battle,’ said Agamemnon. He turned towards the thousands of waiting soldiers and raised his spear above his head. ‘Troy is ours! Victory is ours! But it shall not be an empty one. I’ll not have the city sacked and its population scattered, so they can return and rebuild it when we’ve gone. I’ll not see the shadow of its towers fall across the Aegean again, to be a thorn in the side of future generations of Greeks. No, it must be destroyed. Put it to the torch. Throw down its walls and gates. Don’t suffer even one stone to remain on another. Destroy its flesh and blood, too. Kill every man, boy and infant you come across. And when you have shown
them
no mercy, do whatever you like with their women. Those are my only commands; now see that you carry them out to the full.’

His words were met with a shout and the clashing of weapons against shields. He turned on his heel and strode into the city, his blood-red cloak billowing out behind him. As he passed between the gates, a dozen sleepy Trojans ran out of a door in the side of the tower, only to be slaughtered and trampled over by the swarm of invaders following on the heels of the king of Mycenae. The Scaean Gate had fallen. The annihilation of Troy had begun.

I
NSIDE THE
P
ALACE

A
eneas’s eyes flickered open. He lifted his head slowly from the table, where it had been laying in the crook of his arm, and squinted out at the dark, still market square. Sleeping bodies lay here and there amid the wreckage of overturned benches, empty wineskins and broken kraters. Nothing moved and the only noise was the sound of mingled snores drifting up into the night air. And yet something had woken him; some deeper instinct was warning him that things were not as they should be. Having long ago learned to listen to his intuitions, he forced himself to sit up and feel for his sword. There were many who had left their weapons behind, refusing to bring them to a celebration marking the end of the siege, but his hung reassuringly at his side.

He lifted his legs over the bench and got up. Steadying himself against the table, he fought the thumping of the wine inside his head and took a second look around. Everything was quiet, calm, peaceful, as if the war had happened a generation ago and they had merely been commemorating it. Then his gaze fell on the wooden horse, standing tall and menacing in the centre of the square. Here, Aeneas sensed, was the source of his disquiet. It stood up to its hocks in garlands, which the womenfolk had plucked from the meadows around the Scamander. Offerings of food, too, had been piled all around it in honour of Athena and the other gods who had brought victory so unexpectedly to Troy. The horse had not moved; it had not changed; and in the darkness he almost missed the small detail that was to save his life. But something lifted his eyes to the Greek characters inscribed in its flank, and it was then he noticed some of the letters were missing. No, not missing – they had been blacked out. Aeneas blinked and took a few paces towards the giant effigy. And then he saw that the letters were not blacked out, but that a piece of the horse’s side had been removed, revealing a dark interior from which a ladder of knotted rope was dangling.

Aeneas felt his flesh go cold. His eyes widened and his fingers closed tightly around the hilt of his sword. Now he understood and the truth filled him with sudden, overwhelming terror. The horse had contained men – who and how many, he could not guess – and those men would soon be opening the city gates for the rest of the Greek army, which would have sailed into the bay under cover of darkness. In an instant the whole plan was clear before him. Zeus had weighed the Greeks and Trojans in his scales and they had come down in favour of the Greeks.

The sound of raised voices drifted up from the Scaean Gate. He turned to face them, feeling his heart race in his chest. Then he heard a scream and knew there was nothing he could do now to save Troy from its fate. In the brief space of time that followed, he sifted the options that were open to him and understood what he had to do. He looked down at the figures lying around him and kicked one of them awake. The soldier stirred, reluctantly, then grabbed at the foot that was beating against his ribs.

‘What do you think you’re –?’

‘Shut up, man. The Greeks have returned: they’re in the city now. Wake as many warriors as you can and find whatever weapons are to hand. Do you understand?’

The man frowned, rubbing his eyes and cheeks, then gave a nod.

‘Where are you going?’ he called after Aeneas as he ran towards Pergamos.

Aeneas ignored him. He had thought of heading to the palace and warning Priam and Deiphobus, but the Greeks were certain to have sent men to take the citadel gates and guard them. And that left him only one choice, the choice that his heart would have chosen anyway. His father, his wife and his infant son were staying in the home of Antenor, the elder, and his wife Theano, the priestess of Athena. Troy was lost, but Aeneas could still save his family.

Odysseus and Eperitus ran through the archway and into Pergamos.

‘Menelaus, wait!’

‘Go back,’ the Spartan answered. ‘My mind’s made up.’

He had reached the foot of the broad ramp that led up to the next tier of the citadel, but despite his words seemed reluctant to go any further. His sword hung idly from his hand and he was staring up at the poplars that lined the road ahead as if they were giant sentinels, threatening to attack if he placed even one foot on the neatly laid cobbles.

‘Ours’ too. We’ve decided to come with you.’

Menelaus turned to face the Ithacan king.

‘I don’t need your help, Odysseus.’

‘Yes you do.
I
know where Helen’s quarters are and unless I show you the way you’ll waste valuable time searching the palace to find her. Right now, Agamemnon and the rest of the army are streaming in through the Scaean Gate. Soon the sounds of battle are going to carry up here and alert the royal guard that something’s wrong. And unless you find her straight away, Deiphobus is going to put Helen in his chariot and take her away to safety.’

As he finished speaking, a distant shout of alarm rose into the air and was cut short. Menelaus threw an anxious glance up the ramp, then turned to Odysseus.

‘Very well, come with me, but don’t try to get in the way when I find my wife, or I swear by all the gods you’ll regret it.’

Odysseus turned to Eperitus, placing his hands on his upper arms.

‘And now our paths must diverge, old friend. The night will be dangerous and bloody and I wish we could face it together, but the gods have set us different tasks to complete. My way lies with Menelaus, but you have to find Astynome and keep her safe. And if you can, you must face your father.’