Authors: Colleen McCullough
Well, Odysseus was always pessimistic. ‘I can’t see their holding out against a force as large as ours, I just can’t.’
Palamedes studied the contents of his wine cup and said not one word; Nestor was of like mind. Odysseus continued.
‘Agamemnon,’ he said earnestly, ‘If the gates of Troy are closed, they have more than enough men to hold you off. You must attempt to scale at one place only, the Western Curtain. But it’s only five hundred paces long. Forty thousand men would smother it like flies a lump of carrion. Believe me, they can keep you out for years! Everything hinges on whether they really believed that we’re still at home in Greece. But let them sail a fishing boat to this side of Tenedos and we’re undone. I think you have to plan for a long campaign.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘You could, of course, starve them out.’
Nestor gasped in outrage. ‘Odysseus, Odysseus! There you go again! We’d be cursed to instant madness!’
He wriggled his red brows, unrepentant as ever. ‘I know, Nestor. But as far as I can see, all the rules of war seem to favour the enemy. Which is a great pity. Starvation makes sense.’
Suddenly tired, I rose to my feet. ‘Woe the race of men when your like has command, Odysseus. Go to bed. In the morning I’ll call a general council. The following day we’ll sail at dawn.’
As they went out, Odysseus turned. ‘How is Philoktetes?’
‘Machaon says there is no hope for him.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. What’s to be done with him?’
‘What can be done? He’ll have to stay here. It would be the height of folly to take him into a battle camp.’
‘I agree he can’t come with us, sire, but nor can we leave him here. Once we turn our backs on these Tenedians they’ll slit his windpipe. Send him to Lesbos. The Lesbians are more cultured people, they’ll not harm a sick man.’
‘He’d never survive the voyage,’ Nestor protested.
‘It’s still the least of the various evils.’
‘You’re right, Odysseus,’ I said. ‘Lesbos it is.’
‘My thanks. He’s a man worth saving if at all possible.’ Odysseus looked suddenly brisk. ‘I’ll tell him now.’
‘He wouldn’t understand you. He’s been in a coma for three days,’ I said.
NARRATED BY
Achilles
Kalchas made another prophecy, one which caused Agamemnon to change his mind about being the first of the Kings to set foot on Trojan soil; the first of the Kings to do that, said the priest, would die in the initial battle. I glanced at Patrokles and shrugged. If the Gods had chosen me as the doomed man, why should I worry? There was glory in it.
We had our sailing and landing orders, we knew when we would sweep onto the shore and beach our men. Patrokles and I stood on the foredeck of my flagship watching the vessels ahead of us, far fewer than those behind us, for we of Iolkos were among the first. Agamemnon’s flagship led the way with his huge Mykenaian convoy on his left and the ships of one of my father’s subject Kings, Iolaos of Phylake, on his right. I came next, after me Ajax and all the rest.
Before we pushed off Agamemnon made it clear that he didn’t expect to be greeted by hostile men bearing arms; he expected to invest the city without organised opposition.
But the Gods were not with us that day. The moment the seventh ship in Agamemnon’s line rounded the tip of Tenedos, great billows of smoke arose on the headland flanking Sigios. They had learned that we lurked nearby and they were ready for us.
Our orders were to take Sigios, then press on immediately to the city. When my own ship sailed out into the strait I could see the Trojan troops lining up along the beach.
Even the winds were against us. We had to furl our sails and break out the oars, which meant half of our army would be too weary to fight well. To add to our woes, the current issuing from the mouth of the Hellespont fanned out into the open sea, and it too was against us. It took the whole morning to row the short distance to the mainland.
I smiled sourly when I noticed that the order of precedence had changed; Iolaos of Phylake forged ahead of Agamemnon now, with the men of Phylake in their forty ships close behind him and the High King’s mighty fleet out on his left. Did Iolaos curse his fate, or welcome it? I wondered. He had been elected the first King ashore, he was the one Kalchas said must die.
Honour dictated that I should ask a bigger effort of my oarsmen, yet prudence urged that I ensure my Myrmidons retained enough breath to do battle.
‘You can’t catch Iolaos,’ Patrokles said, reading my mind. ‘What will be, will be.’
This wasn’t my first military engagement, for I had fought alongside my father since I came down from Pelion and the years with Chiron; but all those campaigns were as nothing compared to what awaited us on the beach at Sigios. The Trojans were lining up in thousands upon thousands, more and more of them, and the few ships which had sat on the pebbles yesterday were now inland, beyond the village.
When I touched Patrokles on the arm I felt it shaking, looked down at my own limbs: firm.
‘Patrokles, go to the stern and call across to Automedon in the next ship. Tell him to have his steersmen close up the gap between us, and tell him to pass the message on, not only to our ships, but to everyone else’s. When we beach we’ll not be doing much more than floating in the water, so the beaks won’t break down hulls. Tell Automedon to get his men across my deck onto the beach, and everybody else the same. Otherwise we’ll never manage to get enough troops ashore to avert a massacre.’
He sped through the waist to the afterdeck, cupped his hands about his mouth and shouted to the vigilant Automedon, whose armour sparkled in the sun as he shouted back. Then I saw him obey, saw his ship closing upon ours until it ran with its beaked bow just clear of our beam. The other ships in view were doing the same; we had turned into a floating bridge. Below me my men were up from their oars and arming, our impetus sufficient to run us aground. There were only ten ships ahead of me now, and the first of them belonged to Iolaos.
It plunged its beak into the shingle and came to a halt, shuddering; for a moment Iolaos stood in its bow hesitating, then he shrieked the Phylakian war cry and sped down into the waist. He was over the side with his men after him, swarming as they took up the battle song. Frightfully outnumbered, they did some havoc nonetheless. Then a massive warrior in a suit of gold cut Iolaos down and hacked him to ribbons with an axe.
Others were beaching now. Ships to my left were sliding in, their men jumping from the rails down into the mêlée, not willing to wait for ladders. I strapped on my helmet and clipped its golden plume out of the way, wriggled inside my gold-trimmed bronze cuirass to straighten it, and picked up my axe in both hands. It was a lovely thing, one of the pieces of plunder Minos had picked up during a foreign campaign, bigger and heavier by far than any Cretan axe. My sword brushed my leg, but Old Pelion lay put away, no use in close fighting. This was axe work, and my arms could swing that double-bladed beauty back and forth the whole day without flagging. Only Ajax and myself chose an axe for hand-to-hand combat; an axe big enough to be more useful than a sword was too cumbersome for an ordinary man. Little wonder then that I hungered to come at the gold-suited giant who had killed Iolaos.
Too intent upon the beach, too engrossed in taking everything into account, I lost whatever passed through my mind during those last few moments. When a shudder told me that we were aground, another followed hard upon it, almost causing me to lose my balance. A glance behind me revealed that Automedon had married his ship to mine and that his men were already pouring across my deck. Like some pampered Cretan woman’s monkey I leaped onto the prow and hung there looking down on the heads of such a mixture of men I could hardly tell friend from foe. But it was necessary that I be seen by all the men who surged behind, those on Alkimos’s vessel coming across Automedon’s deck, more and more of them as my ship still endured the weakening spasms of collisions occurring further and further away.
Then I brandished my axe high above my head, roared out the war cry of the Myrmidons in a brazen voice, and sprang from the prow down onto the seething mass of heads below me. Luck was with me; a Trojan head shattered beneath the impact of my heels. I fell on top of him still holding the axe fast in my hands, my shield somewhere on the deck above, too much of a hindrance in a struggle like this. In an instant I was upright, howling the battle call at the top of my lungs until the Myrmidons took it up and the air resonated with the chilling sound of Myrmidons out to kill. The Trojans wore purple plumes atop their helms, another piece of good luck; purple was forbidden to any Greek save the four High Kings – and Kalchas.
Eyes glared at me, a dozen swords menaced, but I reared up and brought the axe down with such force that I cleaved a man in two from skull to groin. It stopped them. Good counsel from my father, who had taught it to every Myrmidon: that absolute ferocity of aggression in hand to hand combat would make men back away instinctively. I used the axe again, this time in a circle like a spoke on a wheel, and those who were still foolish enough to try to get at me felt its blade slice their bellies through their armour, which was bronze. No leather for a Trojan! But then, they had the bronze monopoly. How rich Troy must be.
Patrokles was behind me with his shield to protect my back and Myrmidons were dropping countless in our rear from ships to shore. The old team was in action. I advanced, the axe breaking the ranks in front of me like a priest’s wand, cutting down anyone wearing a purple plume. This was nothing like the battle of a true test of strength; there was neither time nor room to single out a prince or a king, no space separating the opposing forces. This was just a pack of warriors of all degree, breast to breast. What seemed like years ago I had vowed to keep a tally of those I slew, but I soon became too excited to count, in love with the sudden give of soft flesh through hard bronze as the axe bit.
Nothing existed for me save blood and faces, terror and fury, gallant men who tried to parry the axe with their swords and died for it, cowards who met their fates in gibbering dread, worse than cowards who turned their backs and tried to flee. I felt myself invincible, I
knew
none on that field would bring me down. And I took pleasure in the sight of faces split wide in bloody yawns; the lust to kill soaked into my very marrow. A kind of madness, reaping a harvest of chests and bellies and heads, the axe dripping blood, blood running down the handle into the rough rope fibres wound around its base so that my hands wouldn’t slip. I forgot everything. All I wanted was to see purple plumes dyed red. If someone had put a Trojan helmet on my head and turned me loose on my own men I would have slaughtered just the same. Right and wrong did not exist, only the lust to kill. This was the meaning of all my years under the sun, this was what I had been left a mortal man to become: a perfect killing machine.
We ground the soil of Sigios to powder under the trample of our boots, it drifted far above our heads and rose to the vault of the sky. Though in later battles I behaved with more logic and had a thought for my men, in that one their welfare never entered what passed for my mind. I didn’t care who was winning or losing as long as
I
was winning. If Agamemnon himself had fought next to me, I wouldn’t have known. Not even Patrokles penetrated my furore, though he was the sole reason why I survived that first fight, for he kept the Trojans off my back.
Suddenly someone swung a shield across my path. I struck with all my might to come at the face behind it, but like a bolt from a bow he stepped aside and his sword came within a hair of my right arm. I gasped as if flung into a pool of icy water, then shook in exultation when he lowered his shield to see me better. A prince at last! Clad all in gold. The axe he had used to cut Iolaos down had vanished, replaced by a longsword. Snarling my pleasure, I faced him eagerly. A very big man, he had the look of one used to excelling in battle, and he was the first man who dared to challenge me. We circled warily, my axe dragging on the ground by its thong until he gave me an opening. When I leaped and swung he flicked aside, but I was fast too; I dodged the sweep of his sword as easily as he had evaded my axe. Understanding that we had each found a worthy foe, we settled down to the duel steadily and patiently. Bronze rang on bronze-backed gold, always a parry, neither of us able to wound the other, each of us conscious that the soldiers, Trojan and Greek, had moved back to give us room.
Whenever I missed my mark he laughed, though in four places his golden shield gaped to show the bronze, the innermost layers of tin. I had to fight my rising rage as hard as I fought him – how dared he laugh! Duels were sacred work, not to be desecrated by ridicule, and it infuriated me that he couldn’t seem to feel that sanctity. I made two mighty lunges one after the other and missed him. Then he spoke.
‘What’s your name, Clumsy?’ he asked, laughing.
‘Achilles,’ I said between my teeth.
That made him laugh harder. ‘Never heard of you, Clumsy! I’m Kyknos, son of Poseidon of the Deeps.’
‘All dead men stink alike, son of Poseidon, be they fathered by Gods or men!’ I cried.
Which only made him laugh.
The same kind of rage swelled up in me that I had endured when I saw Iphigenia lying dead on the altar, and I forgot all the rules of combat Chiron and my father had taught me. With a shriek I sprang on him, in under the point of his blade, my axe raised. He leaped backwards, stumbling; his sword fell, and I broke it into a hundred fragments. Round came his wasp-waisted, man-sized shield to cover his back as he turned and ran, pushing through the Trojan troops in savage desperation, calling for a spear. Someone thrust the weapon into his hand, but I was too close on his tail for him to use it. He went on retreating.
I plunged into the closing ranks of Trojans after him. Not one man among them aimed a blow at me, whether because they were too frightened or because they respected the time-honoured tenets of duel, I never discovered. The throng dwindled until the battle lay behind us, until a looming cliff brought Kyknos the son of Poseidon to a halt. The spear describing lazy circles, he turned to face me. I stopped too, waiting for him to cast, but he preferred to use the spear as a lance than as a javelin. Wise, since I had both axe and sword. When he flicked the head forward, I jumped to one side. Time and time again it darted at my chest, but I was young and as easy on my feet as a much lighter man. I saw my chance, went in and broke the spear in two. All he had now was his dagger. Not finished yet, he groped for it.