The Song of Troy (33 page)

‘And that’s astonishing,’ said Achilles. ‘Ye Gods, if they only knew! But I didn’t, nor anyone else I mix with.’

‘Not even Agamemnon knows,’ said Odysseus.

‘Because of Kalchas?’ I asked.

‘Shrewd guess, Patrokles. I don’t trust the man.’

‘Well, neither he nor Agamemnon will know of it from us,’ said Achilles.

For the duration of the moon we remained at Troy, Achilles thought of one thing only – meeting Hektor.

‘Best forget it, lad,’ said Nestor at the end of a dinner Agamemnon gave in our honour. ‘You might dally here all summer and not see Hektor. His sorties are random. They can’t be predicted despite Odysseus’s uncanny knowledge of what goes on in Troy. And at the moment we don’t plan any sorties ourselves.’

‘Sorties?’ asked Achilles, looking alarmed. ‘Are you going to take the city in my absence?’

‘No, no!’ cried Nestor. ‘We’re in no position to assault Troy, even if the Western Curtain came down in ruins tomorrow. You have the better part of our army in Assos, and well you know it. Go back there! Don’t wait here hoping for Hektor.’

‘There’s no hope of Troy’s falling in your absence, Prince Achilles,’ said a soft voice behind us: the priest Kalchas.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Achilles, obviously discomposed by those crossed and rosy eyes.

‘Troy cannot fall in your absence. The oracles say so.’ He moved away, his purple robe shimmering with gold and gems. Odysseus was right to keep some of his activities secret. Our High King esteemed the man greatly; his residence (right next door) was sumptuous, and he had his pick of all the women we sent up from Assos. Diomedes told me that on one such occasion Idomeneus was so enraged when Kalchas snatched the woman he fancied that he took his case to the council and forced Agamemnon to take her off Kalchas, give her to his co-commander.

Thus Achilles left Troy a disappointed man. So too, it turned out, did Ajax. Both of them had wandered all over the windy Trojan plain hoping to tempt Hektor out, but there had been no sign of him, or of Trojan attack troops.

The years ground on inexorably, always the same. The Asia Minor nations toppled slowly into ashes while the slave markets of the world overflowed with Lykians, Karians, Kilikians and a dozen other nationalities. Nebuchadrezzar took all we cared to send to Babylon, while Tiglath-Pileser of Assyria forgot his Trojan-Hittite ties sufficiently to take thousands more. No land, I discovered, ever seemed to have enough slaves, and it had been a long time since any war had provided the fount Achilles did.

Apart from our raids, life was not always peaceful. There were times when the mother of Achilles plagued him with her wretched Spell day after day; then she would make off for some other place and leave him undisturbed for moons on end. But I had learned how to make the Spell periods easier for him; he had grown to depend upon me for
all
his needs. And is there anything more comforting than knowing that one’s beloved is a dependant?

A ship came once from Iolkos bearing messages from Peleus, Lykomedes and Deidamia. Thanks to the steady flow of bronze and goods across the Aegaean from our spoils, things at home were prospering greatly. While Asia Minor bled to death, Greece was waxing fat. The first colonists were being assembled at Athens and Korinthos, Peleus said.

For Achilles the most important item of news concerned his son, Neoptolemos. Rapidly attaining manhood already! Where did the years go? Deidamia told him that the boy was almost as tall as his father, and displayed the same aptitude for combat and arms. Though he was wilder, had a roving disposition and a thousand female conquests. Not to mention a quick temper and a tendency to drink too much unwatered wine. Soon, said Deidamia, he would be sixteen.

‘I’ll instruct Deidamia and Lykomedes to send the boy to my father,’ Achilles said after the messenger had been dismissed. ‘He needs a man’s hand on his neck.’ His face twisted. ‘Oh, Patrokles, what sons Iphigenia and I would have had!’

Yes, that continued to eat at him – even more, I thought, than his mother and her Spell did.

It took us nine years to kill Asia Minor. By the end of the ninth summer there was nothing left to be done. The shiploads of Greek colonists were arriving in places like Kolophon and Appasas, everyone eager to begin a new life in a new place. Some would farm, some would trade, some would probably wander eastwards and northwards. Of no moment to us who formed the nucleus of the Second Army in Assos. Our task was over, save for an autumn attack on Lyrnessos, hub of the kingdom of Dardania.

18

NARRATED BY

Achilles

Dardania lay closer to us at Assos than any other nation of Asia Minor, but I had deliberately left it alone through all the nine years of our campaign to reduce coastal Asia Minor to ruins. One reason for this lay in the fact that it was an inland territory sharing a boundary with Troy, while another reason was more subtle: I wanted to lull the Dardanians into a false sense of security, into believing that their distance from the sea rendered then inviolable. Besides which, Dardania didn’t trust Troy. While I left them in peace, old King Anchises and his son Aineas kept aloof from Troy.

Now all that was about to change. The invasion of Dardania was about to begin. Instead of the usual long voyage, I prepared my troops for an arduous trek; if Aineas expected any attack at all, he would assume that we would sail around the corner of the peninsula and beach on the coast opposite Lesbos isle. From there to Lyrnessos was a mere fifteen-league march. Whereas I intended to march straight inland from Assos itself, almost a hundred leagues of wilderness spanning the slopes of Mount Ida, down into the fertile valley where Lyrnessos lay.

Odysseus had given me trained scouts to spy out our line of march; they reported that it was heavily forested, that few farms lay in our way, and that the season was too late for the shepherds to be at large. Furs and strong boots came out of storage, for Ida was already white with snow halfway down its flanks, and it was possible that we would encounter a blizzard. I estimated that we’d march about four leagues a day; twenty days ought to see us within sight of our goal. On the fifteenth of these twenty days old Phoinix my admiral was under orders to sail his fleet into the deserted harbour at Andramyttios, the nearest port on the coast. No fear that he would meet opposition. I had burned Andramyttios level with the ground earlier in the year – for the second time.

We moved out silently and the days on the march passed without incident. No shepherds tarried in the snowy hills to fly to Lyrnessos bearing news of our coming. The tranquil landscape belonged to us alone, and our journey was easier than expected. Consequently we came within scouting distance of the city on the sixteenth day. I ordered a halt and forbade the lighting of fires until I could ascertain whether or not we had been detected.

It was my habit to do this final investigation myself, so I set off on foot alone, ignoring the protests of Patrokles, who sometimes reminded me of a clucky old hen. Why is it that love breeds possessiveness and drastically waters down freedom?

Not more than three leagues on I climbed a hill and saw Lynessos below me, sprawling over a fair area of land, with good strong walls and a high citadel. I studied it for some time, combining what I saw with what Odysseus’s agents had told me. No, it wouldn’t be an easy assault; on the other hand, it wouldn’t be half as difficult as Smyrna or Hypoplakian Thebes.

Yielding to temptation, I descended the slope a little way, enjoying the fact that this was the lee side of the hill and quite free of snow, the ground still surprisingly warm. A mistake, Achilles! Even as I told myself this, I nearly stepped on him. He rolled aside lithely and pulled himself to his feet in a single supple movement, ran until he was out of spear-cast, then paused to survey me. I was vividly put in mind of Diomedes; this man had the same deadly, feline look about him, and from his clothing and his bearing I could tell that he was a high nobleman. Having listened to and memorised the catalogue of all the Trojan and Allied leaders which Odysseus had made for us and circulated through messengers, I decided that he was Aineas.

‘I am Aineas, and unarmed!’ he called.

‘Too bad, Dardanian! I am Achilles, and armed!’

Unimpressed, he raised his brows. ‘There are definitely times in the life of a careful man when discretion is the better part of valour! I’ll meet you in Lyrnessos!’

Knowing myself swifter of foot than others, I started after him at an easy pace, intending to wear him down. But he was very speedy, and he knew the lie of the land; I did not. So he led me into thorny thickets and left me floundering, over ground riddled with craters from foxes and rabbits, and finally to a wide river ford, where he streaked across on the hidden stones with light familiarity while I had to stop on each rock and look for the next. So I lost him, and stood cursing my own stupidity. Lyrnessos had a day’s warning of our impending attack.

As soon as dawn came I marched, my mood sour. Thirty thousand men poured into the Vale of Lyrnessos, lapping about the city walls like syrup. A shower of darts and spears met them, but the men took the missiles on their shields as they had been taught, and sustained no casualties. It struck me that there was not much force behind the barrage, and I wondered if the Dardanians were a race of weaklings. Yet Aineas hadn’t looked like the leader of a degenerate people.

The ladders went up. Leading the Myrmidons, I attained the little pathway atop the walls without having encountered one stone or pitcher of boiling oil. When a small band of defenders appeared I hacked them down with my axe, not needing to call for reinforcements. All along the line we were winning with truly ridiculous ease, and soon found out why. Our opponents were old men and little boys.

Aineas, I discovered, had returned to the city on the previous day and immediately called his soldiers to arms. But not with the intention of fighting me. He decamped to Troy with his army.

‘It seems the Dardanians have an Odysseus in their midst,’ I said to Patrokles and Ajax. ‘What a fox! Priam will have an extra twenty thousand men led by an Odysseus. Let us hope the old man’s prejudices blind him to what Aineas is.’

19

NARRATED BY

Brise

Lyrnessos died, folding up its wings and spreading its plumage across the desolation with a shriek that was all the cries of the women put into one mouth. We had given Aineas into the care of his immortal mother, Aphrodite, glad he had been granted the opportunity to save our army. All the citizens had agreed it was the only thing to do, so that at least some part of Dardania would live on to strike a blow at the Greeks.

Ancient suits of armour had been lifted from chests by gnarled hands which shook with the effort; boys donned their toy suits with white faces, toy suits never designed to take the bite of bronze blades. Of course they died. Venerable beards soaked up Dardanian blood, the war cries of small soldiers turned into the terrified sobbing of little boys. My father had even taken my dagger from me, tears in his eyes as he explained that he couldn’t leave me with the means to escape drudgery; it was needed, along with every other woman’s dagger.

I stood at my window watching impotently as Lyrnessos died, praying to Artemis the merciful daughter of Leto that she would send one of her darts winging quickly to my heart, still its clamour before some Greek took me and sent me to the slave markets of Hattusas or Nineveh. Our pitiful defence was bludgeoned into the ground until only the citadel walls separated me from a seething mass of warriors all in bronze, taller and fairer than Dardanians; from that moment I envisioned the Daughters of Kore as tall and fair. The only consolation I had was that Aineas and the army were safe. So too was our dear old King, Anchises, who had been so beautiful as a young man that the Goddess Aphrodite had loved him enough to bear him Aineas. Who, good son that he is, refused to leave his father behind. Nor did he abandon Kreusa, his wife, and their little son, Askanios.

Though I couldn’t tear myself away from the window, I could hear the sounds of preparation for battle in the rooms behind me – old feet pattering, reedy voices whispering urgently. My father was among them. Only the priests remained to pray at the altars, and even among them my uncle Chryses, the high priest of Apollo, elected to cast aside his holy mantle and don armour. He would fight, he said, to protect Asian Apollo, who was not the same God as Greek Apollo.

They brought the rams to bear on the citadel gate. The palace shuddered deep in its bowels, and through the din beating on my ears I thought I heard the Earth Shaker bellow, a sound of mourning. For his heart was with them, not with us, Poseidon. We were to be offered up as victims for Troy’s pride and defiance. He could do no more than send us his sympathy, while he lent his strength to the Greek rams. The wood crumpled to splinters, the hinges sagged and the door gave way with a roar. Spears and swords at the ready, the Greeks poured into the courtyard, no pity in them for our pathetic opposition, only anger that Aineas had outwitted them.

The man at their head was a giant in bronze armour trimmed with gold. Wielding a massive axe, he brushed the old men aside as if they were gnats, cleaving their flesh contemptuously. Then he plunged into the Great Hall, his men after him; I closed my eyes on the rest of the slaughter outside, praying now to chaste Artemis to put the idea into their heads to kill me. Far better death than rape and enslavement. Red mists swam before my lids, the light of day forced itself relentlessly in, my ears would not be deaf to choked cries and babbling pleas for mercy. Life is precious to the old. They understand how hard won it is. But I did not hear the voice of my father, and felt that he would have died as proudly as he had lived.

When came the clank of heavy, deliberate feet I opened my eyes and swung round to face the doorway at the other end of the narrow room. A man loomed there, dwarfing the aperture, his axe hanging by his side, his face under the gold-plumed bronze helm stained with grime. His mouth was so cruel that the Gods who made him had neglected to give him lips; I understood that a lipless man would not feel pity or kindness. For a moment he stared at me as if I had issued out of the earth, then he stepped into the room with his head tilted like a pricking dog’s. Drawing myself up, I resolved that he would hear no cry or whine from me, no matter what he did to me. He would not conclude from me that Dardanians lacked courage.