Fall of Kings (56 page)

Slowly, very slowly, the light in the sword died as it cooled under the
relentless rain. Khalkeus reached forward and cautiously picked it up.

It was just before sunrise and the storm was past when Kalliades returned to
the palace with Astyanax. As he had left the great tower, it had dawned on him
how Priam had gotten there: He had walked along the walls. This must be the
first time in generations, he thought, when the walls are not manned. Striding
swiftly along them, he had met only a couple of soldiers. Both had been drunk,
and on this night no one questioned a man in Mykene armor carrying a child.

When he came within a bowshot of the palace, Kalliades started shouting.
“Open the gates! It is Kalliades!” He did not want an overenthusiastic archer
shooting him down. He heard his name yelled on the wall. The high
bronze-reinforced gates slowly opened, and he slid through the gap. Andromache
and Banokles were waiting for him on the other side. He handed the child to the
princess, who clutched him close to her.

“Mama,” the little boy said sleepily.

Tears of relief and joy ran down Andromache’s face. Gently she kissed her
son’s cheek. “I am in your debt, Kalliades. Be certain I shall not forget,” she
said gravely. “But what of Priam and Polites?”

“I left them together.” He was unwilling to give her false hope. “I do not
expect them to live. Even now this child might be king of Troy.”

She nodded sadly, then turned and walked back to the palace, holding her son
tightly.

Banokles asked, “Are you going to keep that on?” pointing at the distinctive
Mykene armor. “You don’t want one of our lads killing you by mistake. That would
be annoying.”

Kalliades grinned and sent a soldier to fetch his own armor. Then he wearily
followed Banokles up the steps to the top of the ramparts. The palace walls were
twice the height of a man. The attackers would need ladders, but they had had
plenty of time to make them.

“Well,
strategos,
” he commented to Banokles, looking at the waiting
soldiers. “What is our plan?”

“I spoke to the men,” Banokles replied, “and told them to kill every bastard
who comes at them and keep on killing until they are all dead.”

“Good plan,” Kalliades answered. “I like it. It has the advantage of
simplicity.” He smiled and felt all his tension ease away. Banokles was right.
They had reached the end now, and there were no more decisions to make. They
would fight, and they would live or die.

Banokles grinned back at him and shrugged. “Everyone likes a plan they can
understand.”

“How many are we?”

“Fewer than three hundred now, mostly with wounds. Fifty or so Eagles still.
And some Trojan Horse. We could do with Hektor here now.”

He lowered his voice to a loud whisper. “And there’s that woman.” He nodded
his head, looking along the wall to where Penthesileia stood, bow in hand,
staring out at the city. She was wearing a high helm as well as the breastplate.
Gazing at her profile, Kalliades thought she looked like the goddess Athene
garbed for war.

“Hillas reckons she’s a wonder,” Banokles confided. “Can shoot the balls off
a flea at fifty paces.”

“
Hillas
does? This is the same Hillas who thinks women warriors should
be buried alive for their insolence?”

“I know. I wouldn’t have believed it, either. Perhaps he’s in love,” Banokles
mused. “Though she’s plain as a rock and thin as a blade. I don’t like bony
women. I mean, what’s the point?”

Only half listening, Kalliades sat down with his back to the wall and yawned.
He was tired beyond reason, his wounded leg ached, and he was heavy of heart. He
never had wished to be a Trojan. The warriors of the Lion’s Hall always had
despised the armies of the City of Gold. True warriors were lions among the
sheep, they believed, taking the battle to the enemy in the name of the war god
Ares. The soldiers of Troy hid behind their high walls, resting on the riches of
Priam.

Banokles had been right to ask, Who are we fighting for? There was no
treasure and no king, and the high walls had been rendered meaningless.

Kalliades thought back to the day when, as a child, he had hidden in the flax
field as brutal men had raped and killed his sister. On that day he had vowed to
avenge her by seeking out such men and killing them. He had joined the forces of
the Mykene still firm in his intention. Yet somehow over the years his vow had
been forgotten, and he had found that he was fighting side by side with such
brutes. Kalliades never had raped a woman or killed a child, but many of his
comrades had, men he was proud to call friends.

Rescuing Piria from the pirates had changed his life in many ways. It had
made him remember his pledge in the flax field. And he knew he could never turn
away from it again.

“In answer to your question—” he said to Banokles.

“What question?”

“You asked me what we are fighting for. That little boy. Astyanax is king of
Troy now. We’re fighting for him. But not because he is the king. We fight today
for all the women and old men relying on us in the palace, people who cannot
fight for themselves. We will use our swords to protect the weak, not to kill
them and take what they own. That is for lesser men.”

Banokles shrugged. “If you say so,” he answered. Then he squinted into the
growing light. “Here they come!” he said.

Kalliades rolled to his feet and risked a glance over the crenellated wall.
His heart sank. They were still facing a horde. It seemed like the hundreds they
had killed at the Scaean Gate had counted for nothing. At least most of the
defenders had had a night’s rest while the attackers had been carousing and
killing.

He heard the clatter of ladders hitting the other side of the wall.

Suddenly Banokles stood up and roared at the enemy, “I am Banokles! Come at
me and die, you scum!” A volley of arrows soared over the wall. One shaft grazed
his ruined ear, and he ducked down quickly, grinning.

Looking at each other, they both waited a few heartbeats, then as one leaped
up to face the enemy. A huge Mykene warrior had reached the top of the ladder,
and the sword of Argurios ripped into his face. Kalliades sent a reverse cut
into the bearded face of another attacker, then glanced along the outside of the
wall. There were only twenty or so ladders to this section. All we have to do,
he thought, is kill twenty warriors, then keep on doing it until the attack
fails.

To his right Banokles swept his sword through the throat of an attacker, then
brained another. A warrior with a braided beard came over the wall, an ax in one
hand. Banokles let him come and then, as he cleared the ramparts, ducked and
plunged a sword into the man’s belly. As he fell, Banokles stabbed him in the
back. He grabbed the man’s ax and swung it at the next attacker, smashing
through his shoulder and breastplate.

Arrows soared over the wall. Most were too high, and they flew harmlessly
into the courtyard, but two defenders went down, and one shaft stuck high in
Banokles’ breastplate.

To his left Kalliades saw that three Mykene warriors had forced their way to
the ramparts, giving the enemy a foothold and allowing more to follow. Kalliades
charged the group, cutting one down instantly and shoulder charging the second,
who crashed down, his head bouncing against the ramparts wall. The third man
lunged with his sword at Kalliades’ belly. A Royal Eagle blocked the blade and
slashed his sword through the attacker’s neck. The second man tried to rise, and
Kalliades plunged his blade down through his collarbone and into his chest. He
glanced at the Eagle who had helped him and saw it was Polydorus.

“For the king!” the young aide shouted, gutting another attacker and hacking
at the neck of another.

And the battle raged on.

Andromache laid her bundle of arrows on the balcony wall. She dragged her
unruly hair back with a leather strip, then dried her damp palms on her tunic.
She looked along the palace balcony at the other women. Some were watching her,
nervously following her example; others stared transfixed at the ferocious
battle taking place across the palace courtyard. It could not last much longer,
they all knew. Their gallant warriors defending the ramparts had beaten back
wave after wave of enemy attacks. Now, in the sultry afternoon, Andromache knew
by the chill in her bones that it was nearly the end.

She watched stretcher bearers, most of them old men, struggle back to the
palace with their burdens. Why? she wondered. Our wounded soldiers are just
being saved for a later death, when the enemy breaks into the palace. We cannot
hold the palace wall. It is not high enough, and we do not have enough men. We
cannot hold the palace. She closed her eyes. Despair threatened to overwhelm
her.

“Lady, can you help me?” Her young handmaid Anio was struggling with the
leather breastplate she had been given. Though intended for a small man, it was
too wide, the straps falling off her thin shoulders.

Patiently Andromache unthreaded the straps and then tied them closer
together. “There,” she decided, “that’s better. You look like a tortoise who’s
been given too big a shell.”

Anio smiled, and one girl laughed; Andromache felt her tension ease. There
were ten Women of the Horse left, women and girls as young as fifteen who had
not fled the city. Some had stayed because they had no family and nowhere to go,
others because their families had remained, convinced that the great walls would
never fall. As Kalliades had ordered, she had brought them to the high palace
balcony overlooking the courtyard. Only Penthesileia had ignored those orders
and gone to the ramparts to fight with the Thrakian bowmen.

Andromache frowned, angry at herself for giving in to despair, however
fleetingly. You are the daughter of a king, she told herself. You do not whine
or complain about your lot. Little Anio can find it in herself to smile despite
the odds. You should feel privileged to stand beside her.

She watched the men on the wall, and pride surged in her breast. They are
Trojan warriors, she thought.
We
are Trojan warriors. We will fight here,
and we may die, but our tale will be told and the name of Troy will not be
forgotten.

A familiar voice whispered in her ear: “Yes, Andromache, yes! Be strong! Look
to the north, and help
will
come. We will meet again before the end,
Sister.”

Kassandra! The girl’s voice was so clear, so
present,
that Andromache
looked around. Inside her head she called her sister’s name, but there was no
reply.
Look to the north,
Kassandra had said. Odysseus had told her the
same thing.

At that moment, with awful suddenness, the enemy broke through on the wall.
Eight Mykene warriors fought their way clear, racing down the rampart steps and
across the paved courtyard toward the palace.

“Be ready!” she yelled to her archers, snatching her bow and notching an
arrow to the string. The other women did the same thing. “Wait!” she warned. She
watched coolly as the warriors approached.

Then she shouted, “Now!” and a volley of arrows tore into the running men.
The women had time to loose two or three shafts each, and five of the attackers
were hit. Two fell, and three stumbled on. When the men reached the closed
megaron
doors, there was nowhere to go, and they tried to scale the sheer
stone walls. Only one managed to reach the balcony. As his hand gripped the top
of the wall, Andromache pulled out her bronze dagger. She waited until his face
appeared and then plunged the blade into the man’s eye. He fell without a sound.

She looked again to the struggle on the ramparts. The line of defenders had
fractured in several places, and more Mykene were breaking through. The Trojans
started to fall back in an organized retreat, pace by pace, trying to hold the
line while being relentlessly forced toward the palace.

“Wait!” she ordered the women, seeing some of them raise their bows again.
“Lower your bows. Now! Remember our orders.”

Beneath them they heard the groan and rumble of the
megaron
doors
opening.

With a loud clatter of hooves on stone, the last horsemen in the city rode
out from the palace. In the center of the battle line, defenders broke swiftly
to the left and right. The riders galloped straight for the exposed center. With
lance and spear they slammed into the enemy. Every horse left in the city was
there. Andromache saw the black stallion Hero that had carried Hektor on his
final ride. He was rearing, kicking out with flailing hooves at the enemy
soldiers. Then all she could see was a melee of warriors and horses, all she
could hear the shouts of men and the neighing of their mounts, the clash of
metal and the rending of flesh.

It was a gallant last strike, but it was not enough. The gates in the palace
wall had been opened, and hundreds more enemy warriors were joining the rear of
the horde. The Trojans still were retreating, battling bravely but losing ground
all the time.

“Be ready,” Andromache ordered the Women of the Horse. “Don’t shoot wildly.
Take time to aim. We cannot risk shooting our own men. Make each arrow count.
Always aim high. If you miss one man’s face, you might hit the man behind him.”
This was the instruction she had drummed into her archers over and over in
recent days until she found herself muttering it in her sleep.

Enemy warriors had fought their way within bowshot now, but still she waited.
Then she saw a bearded bloodstained soldier in a Mykene helm look up at her and
grin. “Now!” she shouted. Sighting high on his face, she loosed her arrow. The
shaft plunged into the man’s cheek. She had a new arrow to the string in a
heartbeat. She shot it at a soldier with his sword raised. It bit deep into his
biceps, and she saw the sword fall from his hand.