The Song of Troy (42 page)

Hektor drove a superb team of jet black horses and stood in his car like Ares Enyalios himself. As big and as straight as Achilles. However, I saw no whitebeards among the Trojans; Priam and his kind had kept to the palace. I was the oldest man on the field.

The drums rolled, the horns and cymbals clashed out the challenge, and the battle began across the hundred paces which still separated us. Spears flew like leaves in the awful breath of winter, arrows swooped like eagles, chariots wheeled and turned to dash up and down, infantry made charges and were repulsed. Agamemnon directed our van with a vigour and alertness I had not suspected lay in him. Many of us, in fact, had not had prior opportunity to see how the rest behaved in combat. Cheering, then, to realise that Agamemnon was competent enough to fare very well indeed this morning against Hektor, who had made no attempt to engage our High King in the duel.

Hektor railed and stormed, flung his cars at us time and time again, but couldn’t break through our front line. I led a few sallies during the morning, Antilochos shrieking the Pylian war cry while I saved my breath for the fight. More than one Trojan died under the wheels of my chariot, for Antilochos was a good driver, keeping me out of trouble and knowing when to fall back. No one was going to have the chance to say that Nestor’s son endangered his old father just to get into battle himself.

My throat grew dry and dust settled quickly on my armour; I nodded to my son and we withdrew to the rear lines to gulp a few mouthfuls of water and get our breath back. When I glanced up at the sun I was amazed to see it approaching its zenith. We drove back to the front line at once, and with a surge of daring I led my men into the Trojan ranks. We did some quick work while Hektor wasn’t looking, then I gave the signal to retreat and we fell back safely into our own line without losing a single man. Hektor had lost upwards of a dozen. Sighing in busy satisfaction, I grinned silently at Antilochos. What we both wanted was the armour of a chieftain, but none had opposed us.

At noon Agamemnon sent a herald into the open to blow a horn of truce. Both armies groaned and laid down their arms; hunger and thirst, fear and weariness became realities for the first time since the battle had begun shortly after sunrise. When I saw that all the leaders were converging on Agamemnon, I told Antilochos to drive me to him too. Odysseus and Diomedes drew up with me as I swung in near the High King. All the rest were already there, slaves hurrying back and forth with watered wine, bread and cakes.

‘What now, sire?’ I asked.

‘The men need a rest. This is the first day of intensive fighting in many moons, so I’ve sent a herald to Hektor asking him and his leaders to meet us in the middle and treat.’

‘Excellent,’ said Odysseus. ‘With any luck we can waste a goodly amount of time while the men get their breath back and eat.’

Agamemnon grinned. ‘As the ploy works both ways, Hektor won’t refuse my offer.’

Noncombatants cleared the bodies away from the centre of the strip separating our two armies; tables and stools were set up, and from both sides the leaders drove out to parley. I went with Ajax, Odysseus, Diomedes, Menelaos, Idomeneus and Agamemnon; we stood and watched this first meeting between the High King and Troy’s Heir with great interest and much curiosity. Yes, Hektor was a future king. A very dark man. Black hair showed under his helm and fell down his back in a braid, and the eyes looking at us as shrewdly as we at him were black too.

He introduced his colleagues as Aineas of Dardania, Sarpedon of Lykia, Akamas the son of Antenor, Polydamas the son of Agenor, Pandaros the captain of the Royal Guard, and his brothers Paris and Deiphobos.

Menelaos growled in his throat and glowered at Paris, but each man feared his imperial brother too much to create trouble. I thought the Trojans a fine group of men, all warriors except for Paris, who was out of place – pretty, pouting, precious. While Agamemnon made his introductions I watched Hektor keenly to note his reaction as he associated a name with a face. When he came to Odysseus he studied our mastermind intently, a light of puzzlement in his gaze. But I didn’t find his dilemma at all amusing; I was too consumed with pity. Men who didn’t know Odysseus the Ithakan Fox usually dismissed him when they met him because of his oddly proportioned body and the untidy, almost ignoble figure he could cut when he thought it politic. Look into his eyes, Hektor, look into his eyes! I found myself saying silently – look into his eyes, know what the man really is and fear it! But Hektor’s nature found Ajax, next to Odysseus in our line, far more interesting and attractive. Thus he missed the significance of Odysseus.

Hektor took in the mighty thews of our second greatest warrior with astonishment; for the first time in his life, we thought, he had to look up into another man’s face.

‘We haven’t talked in ten years, son of Priam,’ Agamemnon said. ‘It’s high time we did.’

‘What do you wish to discuss?’

‘Helen.’

‘That subject is closed.’

‘Far from closed! Do you deny that Paris, son of Priam and your own full brother, did abduct the wife of my full brother, Menelaos the King of Lakedaimon, and did bring her to Troy as an affront to the entire nation of Greece?’

‘I do deny it.’

‘The lady asked to come,’ Paris added.

‘Naturally you do not admit that you used force.’

‘Naturally, since we had no need to use force.’ Hektor blew down his nostrils like a bull. ‘What do you propose in this very formal language, High King?’

‘That you return Helen and all her goods to her rightful husband, that you repay us for our time and trouble by reopening the Hellespont to Greek merchants, and that you do not oppose the settling of our Greek people in Asia Minor.’

‘Your terms are impossible.’

‘Why? All we ask is the right to peaceful coexistence. I would not fight if I could attain my ends peacefully, Hektor.’

‘To accede to your demands would ruin Troy, Agamemnon.’

‘War will ruin Troy faster. You defend, Hektor – never a profitable position. For ten years
we
have enjoyed Troy’s profits – and the profits of Asia Minor.’

The parleying went on, pointless words tossed to and fro while the soldiers lay on their backs in the trampled grasses and closed their eyes against the sun’s glare.

‘Very well, then, will you agree to this, Prince Hektor?’ Agamemnon asked some time later. ‘Here among us are the two parties concerned in the beginning of it all. Menelaos and Paris. Let them duel in the open between our two armies, the winner to dictate the terms of a peace settlement.’

If Paris didn’t look a brilliant duellist, Menelaos looked even less brilliant. It took Hektor no more than an instant to decide that Paris was an easy winner. ‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘My brother Paris to duel with your brother Menelaos, the winner to dictate the terms of a treaty.’

I peered at Odysseus, who sat beside me.

‘For the sake of Agamemnon’s reputation in years to come, Nestor, let’s hope it’s a Trojan who has to break up the duel,’ he whispered to me.

We withdrew to our lines and left the hundred paces of vacant ground to the two men, Menelaos testing his shield and spear, Paris preening himself complacently. They circled each other slowly, Menelaos making lunges with his spear, Paris ducking. Someone in the ranks behind me called out a jeering remark which made a thousand Trojan throats rumble, but Paris ignored the insult and dodged on daintily. I had never given Menelaos much credit for anything, but Agamemnon obviously knew what he was about in proposing this duel. I had deemed Paris an easy winner, but I was wrong. Though Menelaos would never have the dash and instinct which make a leader of men, he had learned the art of the duel as conscientiously as he learned everything. He lacked spirit, not courage, which meant he showed to very good advantage in single combat. When he hurled his spear it plucked Paris’s shield away; faced with a drawn sword, Paris chose to run rather than draw his own. He took to his heels with Menelaos hard after him.

Everyone could see who was going to win now; the Trojans were very silent, our men were cheering lustily. My eyes remained on Hektor, who had judged wrongly and was a man of high principle. If Menelaos killed Paris, he would have to treat. Ah! Without any signal from Hektor, Pandaros the captain of the Royal Guard quickly nocked an arrow. I shouted to Menelaos, who stopped and sprang to one side. Amid a howl of outrage from the host at my back, Menelaos stood with the arrow quivering in his flank. A howl of grief from the Trojan side greeted the fact that it was a Trojan broke the truce. Hektor was branded dishonourable.

The armies flung themselves into the fight with a fury that had been absent during the morning; one side was in defence of tainted honour, the other was out to avenge an insult, and both sides hacked and hewed in screaming frenzy. Men fell thickly; the hundred paces which had separated the lines dwindled until there was only a solid mass of bodies and the dust underfoot rose in clouds, blinding and choking us. The guilty man, Hektor, was everywhere at once, ranging up and down the centre in his car, his spear darting viciously. None of us could get close enough to him to try a lucky cast, while men died in fear beneath the hooves of his three black horses. How he forced his team through the frightful crush of men I couldn’t understand on that first day of pitched battle, though later on it grew so commonplace that I did it myself and thought nothing of it. I saw Aineas looming with a pack of Dardanians in his wake, and wondered in the midst of the mêlée how he had managed to come in from his wing. My spear abandoned in favour of my sword, I rallied my men and drove into the thick of it, laying about me from my car, hacking without choice at sweat-grimed faces, keeping Aineas in sight as I shrieked the call for reinforcements.

Agamemnon sent more men, Ajax in their lead. Aineas saw him coming and called off his dogs, but not before I had the privilege of seeing that veritable tower of a man lay about him, his arm a tireless sickle cutting down the enemy chaff. He hadn’t got his axe, having chosen on this first day of battle to use his sword, two-and-a-half cubits of double-bladed death. Though he used it like an axe, it seemed to me, swinging it around his head with a scream of fierce joy. He carried his enormous, wasp-waisted shield better than any other man alive; it never wavered as he held it just clear of the ground, its weight of bronze and tin covering him from head to toe. At his back came six mighty captains of Salamis, and beneath the shelter of the shield itself Teukros hid with his bow, unencumbered, nocking an arrow and letting it fly, taking another from his quiver in a series of movements so fluid they seemed continuous, flawlessly rhythmic. I saw Greek men too far away from him in the press to spot his bulk grin at each other and take heart just because they heard Ajax’s famous cry to Ares and the House of Aiakos: ‘Ai! Ai! Woe! Woe!’ he shrieked, punning on the meaning of his own name, throwing his derision in a thousand Trojan faces.

Surrounded for the moment by my own men, I raised my hand to him as he rolled towards me; Antilochos stood staring in awe, the reins of our team slack.

‘They’ve gone, old one,’ growled Ajax.

‘Even Aineas wouldn’t stop to face you,’ I said.

‘Zeus turn them into shades! Why won’t they stand and make a fight of it? But I’ll catch Aineas yet.’

‘Where’s Hektor?’

‘I’ve been searching for him all afternoon. The man’s a will o’ the wisp, and I always lag behind. But I’ll wear him down. Sooner or later we’ll meet.’

Shrill cries of warning sounded; we drew into formation as Aineas returned, bearing Hektor and a part of the Royal Guard. I looked at Ajax.

‘Here’s your chance, son of Telamon.’

‘I thank Ares for it.’ He shook his armoured shoulders to settle the weight of his cuirass and prodded Teukros gently with the toe of one vast boot. ‘Up, brother. This one is mine and mine alone. Guard Nestor and keep Aineas at bay for me.’

Teukros ducked from beneath the shield, his bright, devoted eyes unworried as he leaped up beside me and Antilochos. No one ever questioned his loyalty, though his mother was Priam’s own sister, Hesione.

‘Come, laddie,’ he said to my son, ‘drive us through these carcases and draw up with Aineas. We’ve work to do with him. King Nestor, will you cover me while I use my bow?’

‘Gladly, son of Telamon,’ I said.

‘Why is Aineas in the van, Father?’ Antilochos asked me as we moved off. ‘I thought he commanded a wing.’

‘So did I,’ Teukros answered when I did not.

My own men and some of Ajax’s Salaminians came with us to hold Aineas far enough away from Hektor to let Ajax force him into a duel. Yet once the pair engaged the fighting became halfhearted on both sides; we watched Hektor and Ajax far more closely than we watched where our missiles fell.

Ajax never used a chariot in battle, probably because one had never been built capable of supporting his weight plus Teukros and a driver. It was his habit instead to stand on the ground and pretend
he
was a chariot.

Bronze rang on bronze, an arm guard popped under the sudden expansion of muscles and fell to be crushed underfoot. They were evenly matched, Ajax and Hektor. They stood and parried face to face, while all about them the fighting slowly died away. Aineas caught my wandering attention with a shrill whistle.

‘This is too good to miss, my white-haired friend! I’d rather watch than fight, wouldn’t you? Truce is called by Aineas of Dardania!’

‘I agree to a truce until such time as the duel ends. Then if it’s Ajax who falls, I’ll defend his body and his armour with my life! But if it’s Hektor who falls, I’ll help Ajax steal his body and his armour from you! Truce is agreed by Nestor of Pylos!’

‘So be it!’

In the circle of faces no arm was raised. All around our territory the battle raged unabated while we neither moved nor spoke. My heart glowed as I watched Ajax. No drop in his guard, no exposure of his body from behind that colossal shield. Hektor danced like a living flame about his bulk, cleaving great slices out of the shield. Neither of them seemed to own a sense of time or an awareness of fatigue; moment after moment their arms rose and fell with undiminished power. Twice Hektor almost lost his shield, yet he took Ajax’s blade on his own and fought on, keeping shield and sword both despite the best Ajax could do. It was a long, vicious battle. One of them would see an opening and dart in only to be met with a blade, fight on undiscouraged.