by John Dolan
The arrow zips into Machaon’s shoulder, and he falls to his knees. The Greeks are horrified. A great healer is worth six fighters. And this is no ordinary healer; Machaon is the son of Aesculapius, the legend who brought back magic salves from the centaurs. With his father’s potions, Machaon can wipe away a wound like a woman wipes grease from a pot.
A dozen Greeks turn away from the fight to lift Machaon to the nearest chariot. Nestor drives the healer to safety.
A Trojan chieftain rushes up to tell Hektor, “Quick, on the other flank! Ajax is killing us! He’s like one of the Titans come back to life!”
The man pulls Hektor around, points far off and says, “See? That shield, bigger than a cart-wheel? That’s Ajax!”
Hektor jumps up, grabs the chariot reins, and rides right through the Greeks, killing as he goes. Some he tramples, others he spits on his spear, others he hacks with his sword in passing, as if he was lopping branches while driving through an orchard.
The chariot bounces over corpses, and the blood and juices splash up, marking the wheels, even the sides of the cart. Bodies pop like gourds, foul gases squirt out with the bile.
Ajax sees Hektor coming, but in his madness it’s the wheels, not the driver, he watches. In terror, he sees them rolling over corpses, some fresh, others rotten, green and black. He watches bellies burst as Hektor’s wheels roll over them, plopping open like dumplings full of pus and shit. He can hear men screaming as loudly if they were an inch from his face. He can see men with bone wounds, the most painful of all, rolling around screaming like seals.
And then Rage is all he can see. She’s screaming at him, one inch in front of his face. Her face like an old woman who died days ago. He smells her breath, putrid and sweet.
Ajax sees himself completely alone on a plain full of rotting corpses. He lets his huge shield drop to his side, then lets it fall to the dust. Then he falls.
He tries to crawl back to camp on his hands and knees.
The Trojans see him helpless and throw their spears at him. But they’re still so scared of him that they stand off and throw short.
Ajax doesn’t even notice the spears falling around him. He whimpers, holding his head with both hands, until his followers run out with shields held over their heads to block the Trojans’ arrows and spears and drag the big man back to the Greek line.
AKILLES STANDS ON THE STERN of a beached ship, looking toward the fight. He sees Nestor’s chariot rumble into the camp carrying a wounded man, and calls, “Patroklas, my friend!”
Patroklas comes out, and Akilles says, “Go see who this wounded man is. I think it was Machaon, but I couldn’t see the face.”
He hopes it was Machaon. They’ll miss a healer like that.
Patroklas finds Nestor taking his meal. Nestor, always courteous, takes Patroklas’ hand, leads him to the cushions.
“No, sir,” Patroklas says, bowing. “I really can’t. You know the man who sent me here, how angry he gets when I waste time. He bid me ask you who that wounded man you brought back might be.”
Nestor mutters, “Why would Akilles care about our wounded? Or our dead, for that matter?”
Patroklas has no answer. He’s been trying to persuade his lord to rejoin the fight. It shames him, shames all Akilles’ people, sitting in the tents while others are dying.
Nestor says, “It’s bad, Patroklas. Everyone’s wounded. Diomedes was hit with an arrow, Odysseus’ side is ripped open, and Ajax—well, the gods have done something to Ajax. I don’t understand it myself. He’s not wounded, but he can’t fight. So no one’s left. I’m too old. Not like I was once …”
Nestor tells a long story about a cattle raid he once led. Patroklas listens politely, gritting his teeth. Akilles will be furious at this delay, but courtesy demands Patroklas listen to the whole long tale.
Nestor concludes, “Yes, that’s how I was as a young man, never caring about my own safety! But your lord Akilles is different, eh? He keeps his courage to himself.”
Patroklas is embarrassed. Nestor regrets his words, puts an arm around him—everyone likes Patroklas, and this isn’t his fault. Nestor begs him, “I knew your father. He told you to give Akilles good advice. Tell your lord to help us now!”
Patroklas can only turn away. He’s of lower birth; he can’t tell a half-god king like Akilles what to do.
Nestor asks, “Has Akilles had a prophecy? I suspect his goddess-mother told him to stay out of the fight.”
The old man chews his beard, “Hmmm … If he’s been warned by a god to stay away, then there’s not much we can do. Ah, I have an idea! Patroklas, ask Akilles to lend you his armor! If the Trojans see a man wearing that armor, they’ll run! We’ll buy some time, at least!”
Patroklas thinks it over, nods, and runs back to ask Akilles. On the way he meets Yuripilas, limping with an arrow in his thigh. “Patroklas, please help me. All the healers are all wounded. Pull this arrow out for me.”
Patroklas groans. So many delays! Akilles will be in a rage by the time he gets back. But he can’t refuse a wounded man, so he lays Yuripilas down and yanks the arrow out, barb and all, while a slave holds him down.
Patroklas takes his last batch of magic herb, rubs it over the wound, and hurries to Akilles’ compound.
12
BREAKTHROUGH
THE GREEKS ARE pent up behind the wall now. If the Trojans break through, they’ll burn the ships and slaughter the men as they stumble through the smoke.
The men on the wall watch the Trojan chariots galloping over the plain toward them, dust clouds hiding the infantry behind them.
The chariots clatter up to the wall, and a few try forcing their way through the ditch. It’s a disaster. The horses rear and buck, refusing to go into that gully full of sharpened tree branches. A few chariots make it into the ditch, only to crash and tip over. Horses scream as the stakes rip their soft bellies open.
Hektor stands in his chariot, at the edge of the ditch, wondering how to attack the wall. Then Polydamus, a clever man, runs up and yells, “Hektor, this is foolish! We won’t get the horses through that ditch, and even if we did we’d be jammed up against the wall! We need to attack on foot!”
Hektor says, “What if the attack fails? How do we get back to Troy on foot?”
“The slaves will wait here, hold the chariots for us!”
Hektor nods and dismounts, calling to the other nobles, “We attack on foot! Dismount!”
By this time the Trojan infantry has come up. Hektor divides the army into five scaling parties. He leads the elite, with Polydamus second in command. His brothers Paris and Helnas are in command of two other parties. Aeneas commands the fourth, and the Lycian allies, under Sarpedon, have their own force, supported by the inland tribes.
The idea is to probe the Greek wall at five points at once, so the Greeks can’t concentrate against them. This should work. After all, the Greeks’ wall is a weak, improvised barrier. As soon as one Trojan party breaks through, the others will run to the breakthrough, then fan out through the camp, killing anyone in their way as they make for the ships.
But there’s always some conceited, well-born young man in a chariot who won’t listen to sound military strategy. This time the loudmouth is Asius, a Trojan nobleman. He gallops up in his gold-painted chariot and shouts, “Hektor, what’s this nonsense about attacking on foot, like peasants? There’s the gate—” and he points to the left, where the Greeks have a huge gate so that their chariots can go in and out of the camp—“I say we charge it at a gallop! What are you waiting for?”
Hektor shakes his head: “No, Asius. We dismount and attack on foot.”
Asius is furious: “What? That’s what commoners are for! Why should I dismount?”
Hektor begins, “Because there’s no room to fight from a chariot. See? No room between the ditch and the wall.”
Asius sneers, “Who told you that? Some coward? I’ll be through that gate before they can even react!”
Hektor shakes his
head again, “No, don’t try it. They’ll have it blocked; they’re not stupid. And then you’ll be—” But Asius shouts down at him, “No! You can fight like a peasant if you want, but my chariot and my men will storm that gate!” And he whips his team away, his noble friends following in their chariots, and their doomed foot soldiers trotting after.
But as he comes up to the open gate, he sees the Greeks have laid a big tree-trunk across the opening. Asius’ chariots have to wheel off. He leads them in a wide circle over the plain, coming up behind his foot soldiers and shouting, “Up, quick, drag the log away!”
The foot soldiers trot up to the gate, but suddenly the Greeks on the wall stand and throw their spears. Some of Asius’ men fall dead, and the rest run back even faster than they advanced.
Asius leads his chariots in a circle, coming back to his surviving infantry, yelling, “Try again, you cowards! They’ve used up their spears!”
So the commoners charge the gate again. And as they come into range, the Greeks throw—rocks this time as well as spears. Asius’ men fall dead under the huge rocks, or writhe with a spear in the belly.
Asius jerks his team to a stop, shakes his fist at the sky and screams, “Zeus! You liar! You told us the wall would fall!”
Zeus chuckles, “Yes, but I promised Hektor, not a fool like you!”
Zeus has nothing but contempt for Asius and his arrogant friends. He has already decided they’ll die today and go down to the underworld, where Asius will have a long time to learn patience.
While these hot-headed fools are wasting time at the gate, Hektor’s storming parties assemble at five different points along the wall. Hektor raises his arm, and all five parties charge at once.
But Hektor’s party sees something that makes them stop dead, halfway across the ditch. It’s an eagle flapping slowly over them with a snake in its talons. The snake is blood red.
The eagle hovers right over Hektor. The snake is biting up at its breast, striking again and again until the bird screams and releases it. As the snake falls, the eagle tilts in the wind and glides away.
Polydamus sidles up and says, “Hektor, did you see that? I know you think I’m over-cautious, but you know what it means! The eagle let the snake go! We’ll fail!”
Hektor shoves Polydamus back, snarling, “You want me to listen to a bird? I have Zeus’ promise that we win today! I don’t care if the birds fly north or south!”
Polydamus screams, “It means we’ll die!”
All the men listen, infected with Polydamus’ fear. So Hektor grabs Polydamus, shakes him, and loud enough for all the men to hear: “There is only one omen, and that’s fighting for your city to the death!”
He lifts Polydamus up with one hand, pointing his spear at the man’s throat with the other, and says loudly, “As for you, Polydamus, you don’t need to worry about being killed by the Greeks. If you won’t attack, I’ll kill you right now!” The Trojans shout with joy, their fear gone. Hektor leads them at a run through the stakes and up the wall, shields high over their heads to block the Greek spears, rocks, and arrows.
Now the Greeks are sorry they didn’t offer proper sacrifices when they built this wall. It’s weak, and the gods will not protect it. The Trojans mass around the joins, dozens of men pulling at every weak point, ripping away the buttresses. The Greeks rain rocks and spears down at them, but other Trojans respond by throwing spears at the defenders.
Now the wall is falling apart and Hektor’s men are shoving through the gaps, spears first.
Ajax has recovered from his fit of madness. He’s trying to make up for his shame, fighting everywhere at once, outdoing himself. He runs from one point to another, dragging men with them, trying to plug the gaps. The Greeks form up behind the wall wherever the Trojans have broken through, using their own shields to make a second wall.
Ajax runs along their line, yelling, “Keep a tight line! Lord or commoner, we’re all one shield-wall now!”
But no matter what Ajax does, Hektor’s plan is working. As the Greeks collect to contain one breakthrough, other points along the wall are left with no defenders. Sarpedon the Lycian sees a gap and pushes his men into it. The Greeks throw everything they have at him, but he’s like a hungry lion hunching toward a sheep pen, paying no mind to the shepherds’ shouts or the rocks they throw.
Sarpedon drags his friend Glaukos up to the wall, shouting, “We must break through! Nobles, lead the way! War is when we nobles earn our meat, when we show our peasants why they feed us!”
At that moment, Glaukos falls with an arrow in his shoulder. Then Ajax drops a boulder on the head of Sarpedon’s friend, Epikles. Epikles’ helmet is crushed as flat as a gold cup lying in a grave. His head is broken; everything goes dark for him.
Sarpedon is so angry he grabs a joint of the wall with his huge hands and pulls it down. He storms into the Greek camp, spear first.
But Teucer the bowman is waiting behind the wall, aiming to put an arrow into the first man through. Sarpedon sees little Teucer grinning at him, bow bent—and the next moment he feels the arrow slice deep into his shoulder.
As he stumbles, Teucer’s huge half-brother Ajax slams his spear into Sarpedon’s shield. The sheer power of Ajax’s spear throws Sarpedon back through the gap, where he lies until his men help him up. As they stand around, he loses patience: “Do I have to do this all by myself? Why aren’t you attacking?”
He picks himself up and charges again through the breach. This time his men follow, screaming the Lycian battle cry.
Far down the wall, where Hektor has broken through, the Greek fighters hear Lycian battle cries behind them. They panic and run for the ships. Hektor, seeing them flee, picks up a huge boulder, too big for any three men of our day to lift, and tosses it at the wall. It smashes open a gap like a wasp smashing through a flimsy spider web.
The Trojans cheer, and Hektor calls, “Follow me through!”
He jumps through the gap, a sight so terrifying only a god could have faced him. There are only men facing him today, and they run away, dropping their shields.
Hektor shouts to his men, “Torches! Bring fire! We’ll burn the ships!” as he hacks his way toward the beach.
13
FIRE
ZEUS WATCHES THE LITTLE POINTS of light—Trojan torches moving toward the Greek ships. He promised Thetis he’d let the Trojans burn at least one of those ships.
Zeus considers the matter as good as finished. He has other places to deal with, so he turns his mind away from Troy. Seeing Zeus’ attention wander, Poseidon grunts in satisfaction. He’s been waiting for this chance.
Poseidon is a strange god. Old, solitary. He never feasts with the other gods. He can hardly communicate with the younger ones, Zeus’ shiny, quasi-human brats.
No one understands him. Fishermen pray to him as god of the sea, but that’s not what he is. Poseidon owns one-third of the universe, the part that lies between Zeus’ sky and Hades’ nightmare caverns under the earth.
They were three brothers: Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. They killed their father, naturally. Then, to avoid killing each other, they decided to divide up the universe by drawing straws. Zeus got the long straw and claimed the overworld, the sky and the lightning, all the shiny parts.
Hades got the short straw, and went down under the earth, to the world of the dead.
Poseidon drew the middle straw, the surface. Zeus told him it was the second-best, but Poseidon has been brooding a long time, wondering if he’s been cheated. Zeus got the best part; everyone agrees on that. But what if Hades’ underworld is second-best? After all, everyone fears Hades, whereas Poseidon gets squeezed between sky and Hell. He feels squashed, slighted.
For example, look at what happened with that Demeter. Even though Poseidon invented horses just to please her, she ended up going down to the underworld with Hades.
Poseidon is always coming in last and he’s sick of it. He should be running all the worlds, and here’s his chance. He’ll take over the war in
Troy, now that Zeus has taken his eye off it. He’ll save the Greeks, and they’ll worship him in place of Zeus.
Poseidon rolls down from the mountaintop, crashing into the sea like a landslide. He translates himself into a wave rushing toward the shore where the Greek ships are beached. All the surface is his, land as well as sea.
When he comes ashore at Troy, Poseidon wrenches himself into something like human form. He’s trying to look like Kalkys, the Greek shaman. But he’s so old and crazy that he does a very bad imitation of Kalkys, a hulking, fuming god badly crammed into a man’s body.
He comes up behind Ajax in the middle of the fight at the wall, tries to talk. But Poseidon’s voice sounds nothing like Kalkys or any other human ever born. The two Ajaxes flinch away from this thing and its noises, its fuming semblance of human shape.
In a rage, Poseidon lifts his trident. He’ll stop trying to encourage the Greeks with words. He’ll do it directly, through the earth itself. He slams the trident into the ground at the two Ajaxes’ feet. The pressure wave reverberates through the whole Greek force, up through the earth into their bodies.
As the temblors die away, the two Ajaxes feel Poseidon’s power fizzing and trembling through them.
The old god sees he’s made his point; he drops all semblance of human shape and melts into the earth.
Clever little Ajax says to big dumb Ajax, “That was no man.”
Big dumb Ajax nods, “I know!”
Little Ajax nods toward the ground, whispers, “It was him, the old earth.”
Big Ajax flexes his knees: “He did something. I feel stronger … in the legs.”
Little Ajax nods: “From the ground up.”
They stand together, shield to shield, helmets almost touching. The best men join them in a tight shield wall. No one needs to speak; the earth itself is bringing them together in an unbroken, unbreakable wall of spears.
And here comes Hektor, at full speed, like a boulder rolling straight toward the Greek shield wall.