The Song of Troy

by Colleen McCullough

  ‘Father, Father, let me live long enough to kill Hektor!’

  He heard me. He answered me. His awesome head bent down suddenly from the illimitable distances of the heavens; for some few moments he loved me sufficiently to forgive me my sin and my pride, perhaps remembering only that I was the grandson of his son, Aiakos. I felt his presence in all my being and thought I saw the fire-shot shadow of his monstrous hand hover dark over the river. Skamander sighed his submission to the Power which rules Gods as well as men. One moment I was going to die, the next I found the water a trickle around my ankles, had to jump aside as the elm collapsed into the mud.

  The opposite, higher bank had crumbled; Skamander dissipated his strength in a thin sheet across the plain, a silver benison the thirsty soil drank in one gulp.

  I staggered out of the river bed and sat exhausted on the drowned grass. Above me Phoibos’s chariot stood at a little past its zenith; we had been fighting for half of its journey across the vault. Wondering where the rest of my army was, I came back to reality in the shame of knowing I had lusted to kill so much that I had completely ignored my men. Would I ever learn? Or was my lust to kill a part of the madness I had surely inherited from my mother?

  Shouts sounded. The Myrmidons were marching towards me, and in the distance Ajax was re-forming his forces. Greeks everywhere, but not one Trojan. I climbed aboard my car, grinning at Automedon.

  ‘Take me to Ajax, old friend.’

  He was standing with a spear in one massive hand, his eyes dreamy. I got down, water still running off me.

  ‘What happened to you?’ he asked.

  ‘I had a wrestling match with the God Skamander.’

  ‘Well, you won. He’s spent.’

  ‘How many Trojans survived our ambush?’

  ‘Not many,’ he said serenely. ‘Between the pair of us we’ve managed to kill fifteen thousand of them. Perhaps as many again got back to Hektor’s army. You did good work, Achilles. You have a thirst for the blood of other men even I cannot match.’

  ‘I’d rather your love than my lust.’

  ‘Time to get back to Agamemnon,’ he said, not understanding. ‘I brought my car today.’

  I rode beside him in his – well, cart is a better word than car, for it needed four wheels – while Teukros travelled in my car with Automedon.

  ‘Something tells me that Priam has ordered the Skaian Gate opened,’ I said, pointing towards the walls.

  Ajax growled. As we drew closer it was too plain that I was right. The Skaian Gate was open and Hektor’s army streamed in ahead of Agamemnon, thwarted by the sheer number of Trojans clustered about the entrance. I glanced sideways at Ajax, showing my teeth.

  ‘Hades take them, Hektor is in!’ he snarled.

  ‘Hektor belongs to me, Ajax. You had your chance.’

  ‘I know it, little cousin.’

  We trundled into the midst of Agamemnon’s forces and went to seek him. As usual, standing with Odysseus and Nestor. Frowning.

  ‘They’re closing the gate,’ I said.

  ‘Hektor packed them in so tightly we had no hope of turning them away – and no chance to attempt an assault ourselves. Most of them made it inside. Two detachments deliberately elected to remain shut out. Diomedes is hammering them into submission,’ said Agamemnon.

  ‘What of Hektor himself?’

  ‘Gone inside, I think. No one’s seen him.’

  ‘The cur! He knew I wanted him!’

  Some others were coming up: Idomeneus, Menelaos, Menestheus and Machaon. Together we watched Diomedes finish off those who had volunteered to stay outside – sensible men, for when they were courting annihilation they surrendered. Liking their courage and their discipline, Diomedes took them prisoner rather than kill them. He came towards us then, jubilant.

  ‘Fifteen thousand of them lost by Skamander,’ said Ajax.

  ‘While we lost not a man more than a thousand,’ said Odysseus.

  A great sigh came from the resting soldiers behind us, and a shriek of such awful agony from the top of the watchtower that we ceased to laugh.

  ‘Look!’ Nestor’s bony finger pointed, shaking.

  Slowly we turned. Hektor stood leaning on the bronze bosses of the gate, his shield propped against it, two spears in his hand. He wore my golden armour with the alien scarlet among the helmet’s plume, and the bright purple baldric Ajax had given him shimmered with amethysts. I, who had never seen myself in that suit, saw how well it became any man who wore it – and fitted it. I should have known the moment I stood back to look at Patrokles that I had strapped him into his doom.

  Hektor picked up his shield and walked a few paces forward. ‘Achilles!’ he called. ‘I have stayed to meet you!’

  My eyes met Ajax’s, who nodded. I took my shield and Old Pelion from Automedon, gave him the axe. Hektor was no man to insult with an axe.

  My throat tight with a trembling joy, I stepped out of the ranks of the Kings and went to meet him with measured step, like a man going to the sacrifice; I did not raise my spear and nor did he. Three paces from each other we halted, each of us intent on discovering what kind of man the other was, we who had never seen each other closer than a spear-cast. We had to speak before the duel began, and edged so close together that we could have touched. I looked into the steadfast darkness of his eyes and learned that he was much the same kind of man as I. Except that, Achilles, his spirit is untainted. He is the perfect warrior.

  I loved him far better than I loved myself, better than Patrokles or Brise or my father, for he was myself in another body; he was the harbinger of death, whether he himself dealt me the killing blow, or whether I lingered on a few days more until some other Trojan cut me down. One of us had to die in the duel, the other soon after, for so it had been decided when the strands of our destinies were interwoven.

  ‘These many years, Achilles,’ he commenced, then stopped, as if he could not express what he felt in words.

  ‘Hektor son of Priam, I wish we might have called each other friend. But the blood between us cannot be washed away.’

  ‘Better to be killed by an enemy than a friend,’ he said. ‘How many perished by Skamander?’

  ‘Fifteen thousand. Troy will fall.’

  ‘Only after I am dead. I will not have eyes to see it.’

  ‘Nor I.’

  ‘We were born for war alone. War’s outcome does not concern us, and I am pleased it is so.’

  ‘Is your son of an age to avenge you, Hektor?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I have the edge on you. My son will come to Troy to avenge me, whereas Odysseus will see that your son never lives long enough to weep over his lack of years.’

  His face twisted. ‘Helen warned me to beware of Odysseus. Is he the son of a God?’

  ‘No. He’s the son of a villain. I would call him the spirit of Greece.’

  ‘I wish I could warn my father of him.’

  ‘You will not live to do so.’

  ‘I might beat you, Achilles.’

  ‘If you do, Agamemnon will order you cut down.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘You leave women to grieve for you? A father?’

  ‘I won’t die unmourned.’

  And in that moment our love burned more fiercely than our hate; I put out my hand quickly, before the wellsprings of ardour could die in me. He took my wrist in his.

  ‘Why did you stay to meet me?’ I asked, holding him.

  His fingers tightened, pain darkened his face. ‘How could I go within? How could I look at my father, knowing it was my rashness and stupidity lost all those thousands of his people? I should have retreated into Troy the day I killed your friend, the one who wore this armour. Polydamas warned me, but I took no notice. I wanted to meet you. That’s the true reason why I kept our army on the plain.’ He stepped back, relinquishing my arm, his face an enemy’s again. ‘I’ve been watching you, Achilles, in that very pretty gold suit, and I’ve decided it must be solid gold. It weighs you d
own. The suit I wear is much lighter. So before we clash swords, let’s have a race.’

  He took to his heels on the last word, leaving me to stand flat footed for a moment before I started after him. Clever, but a mistake, Hektor! Why should I try to catch you? You will turn and confront me not far off.

  A quarter of a league from the Skaian Gate in the direction of our camp – his direction – the Trojan walls flung a huge buttress southwestwards, and there the Greek army cut him off.

  My breath was coming easily; perhaps my wrestle with old Skamander had given me a second wind. He turned, I stopped.

  ‘Achilles!’ he shouted. ‘If I slay you I give you my oath that I will return your body to your men undefiled! Give me your oath that you’ll do the same for me!’

  ‘No! I’ve sworn to give your body to Patrokles!’

  There was a rush of wind about my head, dust blew into my eyes. Hektor was already raising his arm, Old Pelion was already leaving my hand. His spear-cast was true, the shaft bouncing off the centre of my shield, whereas Old Pelion fell limply at my own feet. Hektor cast his second missile before I could bend to pick up Old Pelion, but the capricious wind veered again. I never did pick up Old Pelion. Hektor drew his sword from Ajax’s purple baldric and charged me. Now the dilemma: keep my shield and be protected from a brilliant adversary, or toss it away to fight unencumbered? The armour I could manage, but the shield was far too heavy. So I flung it from me and faced him with drawn sword. Even charging he was capable of halting; he threw away his shield too.

  When we met we discovered the hugeness of the pleasure in a perfect match. I stopped the downward chop of his blade with my own; our arms stood rigid while neither of us yielded; we sprang back in the same instant and circled, each looking for an opening. The swords whistled a deathsong as they carved the air. I gave him a lightning glance up his left arm when he lunged, but in the same passage of arms he took the leather covering my thigh and ripped the flesh underneath. Both blooded, neither of us paused to consider our wounds; we were too eager to finish it. Thrust after thrust the blades flashed, descended, met a parry, went at it again.

  Seeking an opening, I shifted ground cautiously. Hektor was a shade smaller than I, therefore my armour must contain a flaw, a place where he wasn’t adequately protected. But where? When I nearly reached his chest he moved aside quickly, and as he lifted his arm I noticed that the cuirass gaped away from the side of his neck, where the helmet didn’t come down far enough. I stepped back, making him follow me, manoeuvring for a better stance. Then it happened, that irksome weakness in the tendons at the back of my right heel which twisted the foot, made me stumble. But even as I gasped in horror my body was compensating, keeping me upright. And laying me wide open for Hektor’s sword.

  He saw his chance immediately, was on me with the speed of a striking serpent, his blade raised high to deal me the death blow, his mouth gaping open in a wild scream of joy. His cuirass – my cuirass – moved away from the left side of his neck. I lunged at him at the same moment. Somehow my arm withstood the massive power of his arm, his sword descending. It met mine with a clang and flew aside. My blade passed on without deviation to bury itself in the left side of his neck between cuirass and helm.

  Taking my sword with him, he fell so fast I had no chance to help lower him to earth. I let the crosspiece go as if it glowed red hot, seeing him at my feet, not dead yet for all it was a mortal wound. His great dark eyes stared up at me, speaking his knowledge, his acceptance. The blade must have severed all the blood vessels in its path and buried itself in bone, but because it still remained embedded he could not die. He moved his hands slowly, jerkily, until they were clamped fast about the wickedly sharp blade. Terrified that he meant to pull it out before I was ready – would I ever be ready? – I dropped to my knees beside him. But he lay without moving now, gasping hard, his knuckles white about the sword, his lacerated hands trickling blood.

  ‘You fought well,’ I said.

  His lips moved; he rolled his head a little to one side with the effort of trying to speak, and blood spurted viciously. My hands covered in it, I took his face between them. The helm rolled off and his coiled braid of black hair flopped into the dust, its end beginning to unravel.

  ‘The greatest pleasure would have been to fight with you, not against you,’ I said, wishing I knew what he wanted to hear me say. Anything. Or almost anything.

  His eyes were bright and knowing. A thin rivulet of blood flowed from one corner of his mouth; his time was ebbing rapidly, yet I couldn’t bear the thought of his dying.

  ‘Achilles?’

  I could hardly hear my name, and bent until my ear almost touched his lips. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Give my body… Back to my father…’

  Almost anything, but not that. ‘I can’t, Hektor. I vowed you to Patrokles.’

  ‘Give me back… If I go to Patrokles… Your own body… Will feed the dogs of Troy.’

  ‘What must be, will be. I have sworn.’

  ‘Then it is… Finished.’

  He writhed with a strength God given and his hands tightened their hold; with the last of himself he drew forth the blade. His eyes grew instantly dim, the rattle sounded in his throat, pink foam fluffed about his nostrils, and he died.

  His head still between my hands, I knelt without moving. The whole world was struck to silence. The battlements far above me were as still as Hektor lying dead, nor came any murmur from Agamemnon’s army at my back. How beautiful he was, this my Trojan twin, my better half. And how much I mourned his going – the pain! The grief!

  ‘Why do you love him, Achilles, when he murdered me?’

  I jumped to my feet, heart pounding. The voice of Patrokles had spoken within me! Hektor was dead. I had vowed to kill him, and now, instead of exulting, I wept. I wept! While Patrokles lay without the price of the ferry across the River.

  My movement dispelled the silence. A hideous shriek of despair spiralled down from the watchtower, Priam protesting the death of his most beloved son. Others took it up; the air became filled with women’s wails, men crying on their Gods, the dull thrumming of fists on breasts like funeral drums, and behind me Agamemnon’s army cheering, cheering, cheering.

  I began to strip the armour from Hektor savagely, tearing out the unwelcome sorrow in my heart, willing the instinct to mourn out of my marrow with a curse for every piece I ripped away. When I had done the Kings came to form a circle about his naked body, Agamemnon staring down at his dead face with a sneer. He lifted the spear he carried and buried it in Hektor’s side; all the others followed his lead, dealing the poor defenceless warrior the blows they couldn’t while he lived.

  Sickened, I turned away – a chance to fan my rage white-hot and so dry my tears. When I swung round again I discovered that only Ajax had refrained from doing Hektor’s body insult. How could men call him a lubber when he alone understood? I pushed Agamemnon and the rest away roughly.

  ‘Hektor belongs to me. Take your weapons and go!’

  Suddenly shamed, they backed off, looking like nothing so much as a pack of furtive curs hunted from their stolen meal.

  I took the purple baldric from its buckle on the cuirass and drew my dagger. Then I slit the thin parts at the back of his heels and threaded the dyed, encrusted leather through, while Ajax, face stolid, watched the end of his gift. Automedon drove my chariot up; I secured the baldric to the back of it.

  ‘Get down,’ I told Automedon. ‘I’ll drive myself.’

  My three white horses were smelling death and plunging, but when I wrapped the reins about my waist they quietened. Back and forth beneath the watchtower I drove the car to an accompaniment of grief from the top of Troy’s walls and jubilation from King Agamemnon’s army.

  Hektor’s hair came unbraided and dragged loose across the trodden earth until it was matted and grey; his arms trailed limply backwards on either side of his head. Twelve times in all I whipped my horses between the watchtower and the Skaian Gate, par
ading the hope of Troy beneath its very walls, proclaiming the inevitability of our victory. Then I drove to the beach.

  Patrokles lay still and shrouded on his bier. Three times I drove around the square, then dismounted, cut the baldric free. To pick up Hektor’s limp form in my arms was easy, yet somehow to fling it away, to let it lie ungainly at the foot of the bier, was enormously difficult. Yet I did it. Brise darted away, frightened. I sat down in her place, my head between my knees, and began to weep again.

  ‘Achilles, come home,’ she said.

  Intending to refuse, I looked up. She too had suffered; I could not let her suffer more. So I got up, still weeping, and walked with her to my house. She sat me down in a chair and gave me a cloth to wipe my face, a bowl to wash the blood off my hands, wine to compose me. Somehow she managed to remove that iron armour, then dressed the wound on my thigh.

  When she began to pull at my padded shift I stopped her. ‘Leave me,’ I said.

  ‘Let me bathe you properly.’

  ‘I cannot while Patrokles lies unburied.’

  ‘Patrokles has become your evil spirit,’ she said quietly, ‘and that is to mock what he was in life.’

  With a burning look of reproach I quit the house, walked not to the square where Patrokles lay, but down to the shingle, and there dropped like another stone.

  My sleep was a trance of utter peace until into the featureless abyss wherein I dwelled a thready whiteness came, glittering with unearthly light, the blackness of the abyss looming through its tenuous coils. From the distance it moved ever closer inward to the centre of my mind, gathering form and opacity as it came, until it stood before the core of my spirit in its final shape. The steady blue eyes of Patrokles stared into my nakedness. His soft mouth was harsh, just as I remembered it last, and his yellow hair was streaked with red.