The Hittite Read online

  “We’re pledged to Odysseos,” I heard myself tell Magro. “We have joined the House of Ithaca. We’ve eaten his bread and we’ll fight his battles.”

  In the flickering light of the campfire I could make out a twisted smile on Magro’s face. “Even though it’s stupid?”

  “Loyalty isn’t stupid.”

  He gusted out a sigh. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

  As Magro started to get to his feet, Poletes came rushing to us and dropped to his knees before me, his face solemn in the light of our dying fire, his great owl’s eyes grave.

  “What’s the news of Achilles?” I asked him.

  “The great slayer of men is finished as a warrior,” said Poletes, his voice low, somber. “The arrow cut the tendon in the back of his heel. He will never walk again without a crutch.”

  I felt my mouth tighten grimly.

  Poletes glanced at the jug of wine by the fire, then looked back at me questioningly. I nodded. He filled cups for Magro and me, then poured himself a heavy draft and gulped at it.

  “Achilles is crippled, then,” I said.

  Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Poletes sighed. “Well, he can live a long life back in Phthia. Once his father dies he will be king and probably rule over all of Thessaly. That’s not so bad, I think.”

  I nodded, but I wondered how Achilles would take to the life of a cripple. He had chosen glory, he’d told me, over a long life.

  As if in answer to my thoughts a loud wail sprang up from the Myrmidones’ end of the camp. Magro and I jumped to our feet. Poletes got up more slowly.

  “My lord Achilles!” a voice cried out. “My lord Achilles is dead!”

  I glanced at Poletes.

  “Poison on the arrowhead?” he guessed.

  I threw down the wine cup and started off for the Myrmidones’ tents. All the camp seemed to be rushing in the same direction. I saw Odysseos’ broad back, and Big Ajax outstriding everyone with his long legs.

  Spear-wielding Myrmidon guards held back the crowd at the edge of their camp area, allowing only the nobles to pass through. I pushed up alongside Odysseos and went past the guards with him. Menalaos, Diomedes, Nestor and almost every one of the Achaian leaders were gathering in front of Achilles’ cabin.

  All but Agamemnon, I saw.

  We went inside, past weeping soldiers and women tearing their hair and scratching their faces as they screamed their lamentations.

  Achilles’ couch, up on the raised platform at the far end of the cabin, was spattered with bright red blood. The young warrior lay on it, left ankle swathed in oil-soaked ban dages, a dagger still gripped in his right hand, a jagged red slash just under his left ear running halfway across his windpipe still dripping blood. His eyes stared sightlessly at the mudchinked planks of the ceiling. His mouth was open in a rictus that might have been a final smile or a grimace of pain.

  Facing the long life of a cripple, mighty Achilles had killed himself. His final act of glory.

  Odysseos turned to me. “Tomorrow you start your men building the siege towers.”

  10

  Odysseos and the other nobles headed for Agamemnon’s cabin for a council of war. I went back to my tent and tried to sleep. Tomorrow we would begin to build the siege towers. We will put an end to this war. We will cross Troy’s high walls and destroy the city. I knew the fire and blood that awaited the Trojans. Battle is hard and bloody. Sacking a city is dirty and murderous. The men will run wild. Looting and raping are their rewards for winning, for surviving long enough to win. I remembered Hattusas in flames and agony. And other cities that we proud Hatti soldiers had taken and looted.

  I thought of my wife and sons. They’ll be safe enough here in camp. The troops will all be in the city, burning, raping, slaughtering in a frenzy of release.

  And Helen will be in the temple of Aphrodite, waiting for the fate that will overtake her.

  I didn’t sleep well that night.

  The camp’s roosters raised their raucous cry of morning. I went to the latrine trench, then washed and shared a bowl of lentil soup with my men. Poletes was jabbering away. He had learned that the Trojans had sent a delegation to ask for the return of Hector’s dismembered body. Try as they might to keep the news of Achilles’ death a secret, the Achaians were unable to keep the Trojan emissaries from finding out the news. The whole camp was buzzing with it, although none but Odysseos and a few other nobles knew that Achilles had committed suicide.

  Agamemnon’s council met with the Trojan delegation, and after some gruff negotiating agreed to return Hector’s body. The Trojans suggested a three-day truce so that both sides could properly honor their slain and Agamemnon’s council swiftly agreed.

  We used the three days of truce to build the first siege tower. My men and I camped among the trees on the far side of the Scamander River, screened from Trojan eyes by the riverbank’s line of greenery. Odysseos, who above all the Achaians appreciated the value of scouting and intelligence-gathering, spread a number of his best men along the riverbank to prevent any stray Trojan woodcutters from getting near us. The wind usually blew past the city and farther inland, but occasionally it changed briefly and I feared that the Trojans could hear our hewing and hammering and sawing. I hoped they would take it as a shipbuilding chore and nothing more.

  We commandeered dozens of slaves and thetes to do the dogwork of chopping down the trees and hauling loads of timber. My men commanded work crews with stern efficiency, but even so, by the end of the third day we had only one tower ready for use.

  Odysseos, Agamemnon and the other leaders came across the river that evening to inspect our work. We had built the tower horizontally, of course, laying it along the ground, partly because it was easier to do it that way but mainly to keep it hidden behind the still-standing trees. Once it got dark enough, I had several dozens slaves and thetes haul on ropes to pull it up to its true vertical position.

  Agamemnon scowled at it. “It’s not as tall as the city walls,” he complained.

  Odysseos shot me a questioning glance.

  “This first one is tall enough, my lord king,” I said, “to top the western wall. That is the weakest point in the Trojan defenses. Even the Trojans admit that that section of their walls was not built by Apollo and Poseidon.”

  Nestor bobbed his white beard. “A wise choice, young man. Never defy the gods, it will only bring grief to you. Even if you seem to succeed at first the gods will soon bring you low because of your hubris. Look at poor Achilles, so full of pride. Yet a lowly arrow has been his downfall.”

  As soon as Nestor took a breath I rushed to continue, “I have been inside the city, my lords. I know its layout. The west wall is on the highest side of the bluff. Once we get past that wall we will be on high ground inside the city, close to the palace and the temples.”

  Odysseos agreed. To Agamemnon he said, “I, too, have served as an emissary, if you recall, and I have studied the city’s streets and buildings carefully. The Hittite speaks truly. If we broke through the Scaean Gate we would still have to fight through the city’s streets, uphill every step of the way. Breaking in over the west wall is better.”

  “Can we get this thing up the bluff to the wall there?” Agamemnon asked.

  I replied, “The slope is not as steep at the west wall as it is to the north and east, my lord. The southern side is easiest, but that’s where the Scaean and Dardanian Gates are located. It’s the most heavily defended, with the highest walls and tall watchtowers alongside each gate.”

  “I know that!” Agamemnon snapped. He poked around the wooden framework, obviously suspicious of what to him was a new idea.

  Before he could ask, I explained, “It would be best to roll it across the plain at night, after the moon goes down. On a night when the fog comes in from the sea. We can float it across the river on the raft we’ve built and roll it across the plain on its back so that the mist will conceal us from any Trojan watchmen on the walls. Then we raise it�
�”

  Agamemnon cut me off with a peevish wave of his hand. “Odysseos, are you willing to lead this … this maneuver?”

  “I am, son of Atreos. I plan to be the first man to step onto the battlements of Troy.”

  “Very well then,” said the High King. “I don’t think this will work. But if you’re prepared to try it, then try it. I’ll have the rest of the army ready to attack at first light.”

  “To night?” I blurted.

  “To night,” Agamemnon said, glaring at me.

  “But my lord, one tower isn’t enough. We should have four, perhaps six, so we can attack the walls at different points.”

  “You have one,” said Agamemnon. “If it works, all to the good. If it fails, so be it. The gods will decide.”

  With that, he turned and strode away.

  We got no sleep that night. I doubt that any of us could have slept even if we had tried. Nestor organized a blessing for the tower. A pair of aged priests sacrificed a dozen rams and goats, slitting their throats with ancient stone knives as they lay bound and bleating on the ground, then painting their blood on the wooden framework.

  Poletes fretted that they offered no bulls or human captives to sacrifice.

  “Agamemnon doesn’t think enough of your tower to waste such wealth upon it,” he told me in the dark shadows. “When he started out for Troy and the winds blew the wrong way for sailing for weeks at a time, he sacrificed a hundred horses and dozens of virgins. Including his own daughter.”

  “His daughter?” That stunned me.

  Nodding grimly, Poletes said, “He wants Troy. The High King will stop at nothing to get what he wants.”

  I had seen massive sacrifices at Hattusas and elsewhere. Human captives were often put on the altar. But his own daughter! It made me realize how ruthless the High King really was.

  Fortune was with us that night. A cold fog seeped in from the sea. We rafted the tower across the river, crouched in the chilling mist with the tower’s framework looming above us like the skeleton of some giant beast. The moon disappeared behind the black humps of the islands and the night become as dark as it would ever be.

  I had hoped for cloud cover, but the stars were watching us as we slowly, painfully, pulled the tower on big wooden wheels across the plain of Ilios and up the slope that fronted Troy’s western wall. Slaves and thetes strained at the ropes while others slathered animal grease on the wheels and axles to keep them from squeaking.

  Poletes crept along beside me, silent for once. I strained my eyes for a sight of Trojan sentries up on the battlements, but the fog kept me from seeing much. Straight overhead I could make out the patterns of the stars: the Bears and the Hunter, facing the V -shaped horns of the Bull. The Pleiades gleamed like a cluster of seven blue gems in the Bull’s neck.

  The night was eerily quiet. Perhaps the Trojans, trusting in the truce the Achaians had agreed to, thought that no hostilities would resume until the morning. True, the fighting would start with the sun’s rise. But were they fools enough to post no lookouts through the night?

  The ground was rising now, and what had seemed like a gentle slope felt like a steep cliff. We all gripped the ropes in our hands and put our backs into it, trying not to grunt or cry out with the pain. I looked across from where I was hauling and saw Magro, his face contorted with the effort, his booted heels digging into the mist-slippery grass, straining like a common laborer, just as all the rest of us were.

  At last we reached the base of the wall and huddled there, panting. I sent Poletes scampering to the corner where the wall turned, to watch the eastern sky and tell me when it started to turn gray with the first hint of dawn. We all sat sprawled on the damp ground, letting our aching muscles relax until the moment for action came. The tower lay lengthwise along the ground, waiting to be pulled up to its vertical position. I sat with my back against the wall of Troy and counted the time by listening to my heartbeat.

  I heard a rooster crow from inside the city, and then another. Where is Poletes? I wondered. Has he fallen asleep or been found by a Trojan sentry?

  Just as I was getting to my feet the old storyteller scuttled back through the mist to me.

  “The eastern sky is still dark, except for the first touch of faint light between the mountains. Soon the sky will turn milky white, then as rosy as a flower.”

  “Odysseos and his troops will be starting out from the camp,” I whispered. “Time to get the tower up.”

  The fog was thinning slightly as we pushed on the poles that raised the tower to its vertical position. It was even heavier than it looked, because of the horse hides and weapons we had lashed to its platforms. Teams of men braced the tower with more poles as it rose. There was no way we could muffle the noise of the creaking and our own gasping, grunting exertions. It seemed to take forever to get the thing standing straight, although only a few strenuous moments had passed.

  Still, just as the tower tipped over and thumped ponderously against the wall in its final position, I heard voices calling confusedly from up atop the battlements.

  I turned to Poletes. “Run back to Odysseos and tell him we’re ready. He’s to come as fast as he can!”

  The plan was for Odysseos and a picked squad of fifty of his Ithacans to make their way across the plain on foot, because chariots would have been too noisy. I began to wonder if that had been the smartest approach.

  Someone was shouting from inside the walls now and I saw a head appear over the battlements, silhouetted for a brief instant against the graying sky.

  I pulled out my sword and swung up onto the ladder that led to the top of the tower. Magro was barely a step behind me, and the rest of my squad started swarming up the tower’s sides, unrolling the horse hides we had placed to protect the tower’s sides against spears and arrows.

  “What is it?” I heard a boy’s frightened high-pitched voice from atop the wall.

  “It’s a giant horse!” a fear-stricken voice answered. “With warriors inside it!”

  11

  I reached the topmost platform of the tower, sword in hand. Our calculations had been almost perfect. The platform reared a shin’s length or so higher than the wall’s battlements. Without hesitation I jumped down onto the stone parapet and from there onto the wooden platform behind it.

  A pair of stunned Trojan youths stood barely a sword’s length before me, their mouths agape, eyes bulging, long spears in their trembling hands. I rushed at them and cut the closer one nearly in half with a swing of my sword. The other dropped his spear and, screaming, jumped off the platform into the dark street below.

  The sky was brightening. The city seemed asleep, but across the angle of the wall I could see another sentry on the platform, his long spear outlined against the gray-pink of dawn. Instead of charging at us he turned and ran toward the square stone tower that flanked the Scaean Gate.

  “He’ll alarm the guard,” I said to Magro. “They’ll all be at us in a few moments.”

  Magro nodded, his battle-hardened face showing neither fear nor anticipation.

  It was now a race between Odysseos’ Ithacans and the Trojan guards. We had won a foothold inside the walls; now our job was to hold it. As my men swiftly broke out the spears and shields that we had roped to the tower’s timbers, I glanced over the parapet. Fog and darkness still shrouded the plain. I couldn’t see Odysseos and his men in the shadows—if they were there.

  A dozen Trojan guards spilled out of the watchtower, and I saw even more Trojans rushing toward us from the far side of the tower, running along the south wall, spears leveled. The battle was on.

  My men had faced spears before, and they knew how to use their own. We formed a defensive wall by locking our shields together and put out a bristling hedgehog front with our long spears. I took a spear and butted my shield next to Magro’s, at the end of our line. I could feel my heart pounding; my palms were slippery with sweat.

  The Trojans attacked us with reckless fury, practically leaping on our spear p
oints. They fought to save their city. We fought for our lives. There was no way for us to retreat without being butchered. We either held our foothold on the wall or we died.

  Our shield wall buckled under their ferocious attack. We were forced a step back, then another. A heavy bronze spear point crashed over the top of my shield, missing my ear by a finger’s width. I thrust my spear into the belly of that man: his face went from shocked surprise to the final agony of death in the flash of a heartbeat.

  More Trojans were scrambling up the ladders to the platform, strapping armor over their nightclothes as they ran. These were the nobility, the cream of their fighting strength. I could tell from the gaudy plumes of the helmets they were putting on and the burnished bronze of their breastplates glinting in the light of the new day.

  Farther off, archers were kneeling as they fired flaming arrows at our tower. Others fired at us. An arrow chunked into my shield. Another hit Harkan, two men down from me, in his leg. He staggered backward and let his shield drop. Instantly a Trojan drove his spear through Harkan’s unprotected chest.

  Their archers began lofting their shots to get over our wall of shields. Flaming arrows fell among us. Men screamed and fell to the wooden flooring, their clothes and flesh on fire.

  The barrage of arrows would quickly break our shield wall and what was left of my men would go down under the weight of Trojan numbers. I felt a burning fury rise inside me, a rage against those archers who knelt a safe distance away and tried to kill us at their leisure. Call it battle fury, call it bloodlust, I felt a flame of hatred and rage that I had never experienced before.

  “Hold here,” I shouted to Magro. Before he could do more than grunt I drove forward, surprising the Trojans in front of me. Grasping my spear in two hands, level with the floor, I pushed four of them off their feet and slipped between the others, dodging their clumsy thrusts as they half-turned to slash at me. I killed one of them; Magro and the rest of my men pushed forward and killed several more. The Trojans quickly turned back to face my advancing men.