Fall of Kings

by David Gemmell

  Polydorus had fought in Thraki years earlier, but his experience on the battlefield was limited. Yet he knew Agamemnon could field many times the number of warriors Priam could. Hektor’s surprise attack had won the day, he thought as he watched the enemy soldiers streaming back toward the pass. But what of tomorrow?

  He glanced past the king to Prince Polites, who also was swathed in sheepskin, his red-rimmed eyes watching the battle anxiously. As if he felt the Eagle’s gaze, Polites turned and gave him a rueful smile. Polydorus knew that Polites shared his opinion: The war was not over, not by a long way.

  To his father, Polites said nervously, “The battle was already going our way when the Trojan Horse arrived. Antiphones would have won the day eventually, Father, although with far more casualties.”

  Priam spit on the floor at his feet. “Pah! Antiphones is a fat fool. And you are an idiot. You know nothing of war. You should be down there fighting, not up here watching from a safe distance.”

  Polites flushed. “I am not a warrior, Father. You chose me as your chancellor, to look after your treasury. I serve the city in my own way.”

  Priam turned on him venomously. “And how is the treasury, Polites? How well are you looking after it for me? Is it overflowing?”

  Stung by the words, Polites said heatedly, “You know very well, Father, we have to pay for this war. Your mercenaries down there have to be paid for, and if they think we are losing, they will demand even more of our wealth. We need more tin and copper to make bronze armor and weapons, yet we have to go farther afield, and our desperation puts the prices up. Now we badly need tin, and the Xanthos is our only hope.”

  Strangely, that seemed to cheer the king. “The Xanthos, yes,” he said with pleasure. “I trust Aeneas will be here soon or he’ll miss the fighting altogether. I was looking forward to seeing Agamemnon’s ships in flames.”

  Polydorus turned to look down at the battlefield again. The enemy forces were retreating to the earthwork they had built to protect the pass. Some seemed to be fleeing blindly, others retreating in good order. Mykene, he thought, or Achilles and his Myrmidons, his elite guard. They would not show their backs to their enemy. He suddenly felt a moment of kinship with the disciplined soldiers, enemy or not. He remembered the Mykene hero Argurios holding the stairs, mighty in his courage and dying with his love Laodike after saving Troy for her sake. Polydorus cherished that day as the best of his young life.

  “My lord, perhaps we should return to the palace,” he suggested. “It will be getting dark soon, and the fighting will be over. Even my young eyes cannot see what is happening so far away and in failing light.”

  The king sniffed. “Then I must find myself an aide with better eyesight,” he said, but he allowed himself to be helped back to the stairwell.

  As they descended the gloomy tower steps cautiously, Polydorus heard the old king repeating to himself, “My Hektor is back, and the rats will flee to their holes.”

  For two days there was little movement from the armies of Agamemnon. Driven back behind the reinforced earthwork that protected the landward side of the pass, the western forces showed no heart for a renewed attack.

  The Trojans, who had put every soldier who could stand up into battle for days on end, took the precious time to honor their dead, treat the wounded, and sleep. Hektor was tireless, laying defense plans with his generals, touring the House of Serpents and the barracks hospital to encourage his wounded and dying men, and walking the field of battle where the Trojan army lay in wait for Agamemnon’s next attack.

  Kalliades could see the gray sheen of exhaustion on his features when they met on the plain of the Scamander on the third day.

  “You need rest, Hektor,” the old general Lucan told him, as if he heard Kalliades’ thoughts. “Troy needs all your strength for the coming battles.”

  Hektor said nothing, and Lucan went on: “And we are too close to the enemy lines. A well-placed arrow could find you and end all our hopes.”

  Hektor and Lucan, with Banokles and Kalliades, stood a mere hundred paces from the enemy earthwork, now bristling with sharpened stakes to deter an attack by riders. The massive earthwork formed a semicircle, protecting the head of the narrow pass. On the cliffs above the pass and on the white walls of King’s Joy the Trojans could see the glint of armor as enemy warriors watched and waited.

  “What are you, his mother?” Banokles asked irritably. He made no secret of the fact that he disliked the old general, and Kalliades thought the feeling was mutual.

  Lucan smiled thinly, and his eyes were cold. “If you had ever met Hekabe the queen, Mykene, you would not ask such a foolish question.”

  Hektor was staring up at the cliffs, and he appeared not to hear. Then he said, his voice distant, “I will not die from an arrow wound, General.”

  “Did his soothsayer tell King Priam the manner of your death?” Lucan asked, his tone skeptical.

  Hektor visibly shook off his reverie and clapped the general on the shoulder. “No, old friend, but Agamemnon would ensure an archer who killed me would suffer a cruel and lingering death. He has other plans for me. He would see me shamed and laid low in public by Achilles or another champion.”

  “Ajax Skull Splitter is here. I saw him in the thick of it,” Banokles said helpfully.

  Kalliades nodded. “I saw him, too. Killed two of our men with one sweep of that great broadsword.”

  “Still carrying that old tower shield, too.” Banokles’ face, normally grim these days, lightened at the memory. “Big heavy thing. No one else was strong enough to carry it all day. Like an ox, he was. Still is, I suppose.”

  Hektor suddenly threw his head back and laughed, and many of the soldiers resting nearby smiled, the sound was so infectious. “I am sure Agamemnon has many champions eager to take me on, Banokles. I have heard of Ajax. He is a mighty warrior.”

  Thinking of Ajax brought to Kalliades’ mind the young soldier who had saved his life.

  He asked, “Does anyone know the name of a young Trojan who also carries a tower shield?”

  Hektor said without hesitation, “Boros. He and his brother are from Rhodos, although their mother was Trojan. The brother, Echios, is dead, I’m told. Both Scamandrians.”

  There was no reproach in his tone, but Kalliades felt foolish. He was an aide to the general of the Scamandrians, yet he knew few of his soldiers. Hektor could greet every man fighting for Troy by name, and he knew the names of their fathers. Only the mercenaries from Phrygia, Zeleia, and the Hittite lands were unknown to him.

  Lucan pointed up toward the pass and asked impatiently, “When will we strike them, Hektor?”

  Kalliades and Banokles glanced at each other. They all had been present that morning in the Amber Room at the palace when Priam had demanded an immediate attack on the pass and King’s Joy.

  Hektor, sitting at ease in a great carved chair, a goblet of water in his hand, had said patiently, “Attacking the pass would be suicidal, Father. We could take the earthwork, though it would be costly in casualties, fighting uphill and unable to use the Trojan Horse. Then we could fight our way to the pass. But within the narrowest part of the pass there is only room for swordsmen to fight two abreast. Pitting their best warriors against ours would win a stalemate.”

  “Except,” he went on, his words soft but emphatic, “they hold the cliffs above. They would be raining arrows and spears down on our fighters. It would be suicidal,” he repeated.

  The king strode up and down the great room, his robes swirling around bare feet.

  “Then we must attack from the sea,” he said after a while. “The Xanthos will use its fire hurlers to destroy Agamemnon’s ships.”

  “That would indeed be a gift from Poseidon,” Hektor responded patiently. “If we could coordinate an attack from the sea at night, we could send climbers to take the cliffs, then King’s Joy. But this is daydreaming, Father. Our ships are blockaded by Menados’ fleets. They are useless to us in the Bay of Troy. And we do not know
where the Xanthos is.”

  “Wrecked by Poseidon on some foreign shore, perhaps,” Antiphones added. He was sitting on a couch with one leg raised on cushions. He had suffered a wound to his thigh. His face was pale, and he was clearly in pain, his normally jovial manner subdued.

  Priam stopped walking and stood as if deep in thought, his mouth working. Then he said craftily, a gleam in his eye, “We will attack from the sea! The Xanthos will use its fire hurlers. We’ll see how Agamemnon likes that!”

  Losing patience at last, Hektor raised his voice. “We do not know where the Xanthos is, Father! And my wife is on board. Would you send the ship into battle with Andromache at risk?”

  Priam was startled by his son’s unaccustomed tone, and his voice became querulous. “Where is Andromache? Where is she? Is she here?” He gazed around anxiously as the other men looked away, embarrassed.

  Kalliades dragged his mind back to the present. Hektor was saying, “We can keep the enemy bottled up in the bay indefinitely. They cannot fight their way out of the pass any more than we can fight our way in. Agamemnon may call himself the Battle King, but the other kings accept his command only as long as there are battles to fight. As time passes, they will quickly tire of one another’s company, and quarrels will start. They will all be heading home soon if there is no sign of the treasure of Priam they’ve been promised.

  “Achilles loathes Agamemnon, I’m told, and is here only to avenge his dead father. Old Nestor is here because he fears Agamemnon’s power. Only Sharptooth and his Kretans can be relied upon.”

  “And Odysseus?” Kalliades asked. “What of the Ugly King? He is a man of honor.”

  “He is indeed,” Hektor responded heavily. “He has thrown in his lot with the Mykene and will not be moved.”

  Banokles had been watching the enemy forces. “Look!” he said suddenly, “what are they doing?”

  Fifty or so soldiers had moved some distance out of the pass and were digging feverishly.

  “Shall I tell our archers to shoot them?” Lucan suggested.

  Hektor shook his head. “They are too far away for accuracy, and it would merely be a waste of arrows. We cannot afford to lose more weapons.” His face became grave, and Kalliades guessed he was thinking about the perilous state of Troy’s armory. Khalkeus of Miletos had been recalled from bridge building at Dardanos to take charge of the smiths laboring night and day to renew bronze swords and spears. Hektor had ordered that every man fighting for Troy should have a bronze breastplate and helm, even though it meant the elite troops had to go without bronze greaves and their shoulder and arm guards.

  The shortage of tin meant that most of the forges were dark, and the bronzesmiths were being pressed into duty as stretcher bearers and gate guards. Kalliades knew of a young bronze worker, a master of his craft, who was slaughtering injured horses and butchering the dead ones for meat. The whole city awaited the return of the Xanthos and its hoped-for cargo of tin.

  “They’re digging a second earthwork,” Kalliades said, shading his eyes.

  “Let them,” Hektor replied, turning away. “They are wasting their time and energy building more defenses. I’m not going to attack them. And it will only hamper any attack they make.”

  “But the king,” Lucan said angrily. “He ordered you to attack, lord.”

  Hektor looked the old man in the eye until the general dropped his gaze. Then Hektor walked away.

  Kalliades mounted his horse and rode slowly around the battlefield. The Ilos regiment was in the front line, drawn up in defensive squares, although the soldiers were relaxing, lying asleep or eating, staring into the flames of their campfires.

  Behind them were the Scamandrians. He rode along their lines, looking for the telltale tower shield, but he could not find Boros. He wondered why it bothered him. In each pitched battle of his soldier’s life he had been saved hundreds of times by a comrade’s well-placed sword or shield, just as he had rescued others. Kalliades gave a mental shrug. Perhaps it was simply that he himself once had carried a tower shield, long lost during the palace siege. Now he favored a round leather and wood buckler strapped to his arm, which gave him more flexibility in battle. The front lines of the Mykene phalanx were armed with waisted tower shields of horn and hide, which worked well for them as they attacked like a giant tortoise but gave them less maneuverability when fighting in a melee.

  Having toured the entire army, noting Hektor’s deployment of the regiments, the Eagles, and the Trojan Horse, Kalliades returned to the front line of the Scamandrians to find Banokles. His comrade had stripped off his old battered breastplate and was lying on his back in his undershirt, gazing at the darkening sky.

  Kalliades stepped down and handed his mount to a horse boy, then sat beside the powerful warrior. Another youngster brought two cups of watered wine and a plate of meat and corn bread. Kalliades thanked him.

  He nudged Banokles and handed him the wine. Banokles sat up and took it. He sipped the wine, and after a while he asked, “Do you think they’ll attack again?”

  Kalliades glanced around, but there was no one within earshot. “Agamemnon’s ambition and Achilles’ need for vengeance will feed their determination,” he responded, “at least for a while. Yes, I think they will attack again. But they must come through the pass, so they cannot use the phalanx. It will be a death-or-glory charge.”

  “I always liked that one,” Banokles said. “It worked for us. It might work for them. Not a soft-bellied puker up there.” He gestured with his head in the direction of the pass.

  Kalliades knew he was right. They had served with the Mykene army themselves for many years, and they both knew that the reputation of those grim warriors was well deserved.

  The silence lingered for a while. It was a still night, and Kalliades listened to its sounds: the laughter of the men, the crackling of the nearby campfire, the sounds of horses shifting their hooves and snuffling gently. Then he asked, “What did the king say about generals? He’d rather have a lucky fool than an unlucky genius?”

  Banokles frowned and scratched his thick blond beard. “I think that’s what he said. Great Zeus,” he said indignantly, “only a king could get away with calling me a fool.”

  “You’re not a fool, Banokles. But you have always been lucky in battle.”

  Banokles’ face darkened, and he said nothing. Kalliades guessed he was thinking about luck and about Red, so he stayed silent.

  Finally Banokles asked him, “How many battles do you think we’ve been in, Kalliades?”

  Kalliades shrugged. “I don’t know. Hundreds.”

  “But here we are, waiting for another one. Fit and strong and ready. We’ve neither of us been badly wounded. Just my ear, I suppose.” He rubbed the nub of his ear thoughtfully, then the scar on his right bicep where the sword of Argurios had plunged through it. “Now, we are great warriors, you and I. But we have been lucky, haven’t we?”

  He glanced at Kalliades, who nodded his agreement, guessing what he was leading up to.

  “So why”—Banokles frowned—“why in the name of Hades does someone like Red, who never did anyone any harm, die like that when we’re still here? What poxy god decided she had to die such a stupid poxy death?”

  He looked at Kalliades, who saw grief and anger in his friend’s ice-blue eyes.

  “Whores get killed sometimes,” Banokles went on. “It’s a perilous business; everybody knows that. But Red had given up her whoring when she got married. She just loved those honey cakes, and he was the only baker in the city who was still making them. That was the reason she asked him to our house.”

  There was another long silence. “And he was only a skinny little runt.”

  “He was a baker,” Kalliades said gently. “He had strong arms and shoulders. Red would not have stood a chance.”

  Banokles was quiet again, watching as the sky darkened to pitch black. Then he said, “That priestess Piria, Kalliope, whatever she called herself. That was a good death, saving her fri
end. And that queen on the black stallion. They both had a chance of a warrior’s death even though they’re women. But Red…” His voice trailed off.

  “They say heroes who die in battle go to the Elysian Fields and dine in the Hall of Heroes. I’ve always looked forward to that. But what happens to the women who are heroes? Like Piria and that queen? And what happens to Red? Where does she go now?”

  Kalliades knew that his comrade was consumed by the grief of loss and by frustration. Banokles had been used to the simple code of the warrior: If someone kills your friend or brother in arms, you take revenge. Yet how could he avenge himself on a dead baker?

  Kalliades sighed. “I don’t know the answer to that, my friend. Maybe one day you’ll find out. I hope so.”

  He added sadly, “We’ve seen a lot of death, you and I—more than most. You know as well as I do death doesn’t always come to those who deserve it.”

  Kalliades’ mind went back to the farm outside Troy and Piria standing on the hillside, her blond hair shining in the light from the blazing barn, her face stern, calmly shooting arrows into the assassins who had come to kill Andromache. He had promised Odysseus that he would take Piria to meet Hektor’s wife, that he would see her safely to the end of her journey. How foolish of him, how arrogant, to think that he could guarantee her safety, as if love were all that was needed. The hurt in him had lessened over the seasons, but the doubt had grown. Had he really loved Piria? Or had Red been right?

  He thought of the big whore’s words to him long ago. “We are so alike, Kalliades. Closed off from life, no friends, no loved ones. That is why we need Banokles. He is life, rich and raw in all its glory. No subtlety, no guile. He is the fire we gather around, and his light pushes back the shadows we fear.”

  He looked at Banokles, who had lain back again and closed his eyes, his profile barely visible in the firelight. A sudden trickle of fear ran through Kalliades. His old comrade in arms had changed so much in the last few years. His wife’s death had wrought more changes. Would he continue to be the lucky fool Priam had called him?