by Glyn Iliffe
The sound of the battle washed over him like a strong wind and for a while he could barely identify any individual among the closely fought press. Then he noticed Apheidas directing more reserves towards the fight with the Greek infantry, while ordering others on his right to move back. And then, following the direction of Apheidas’s orders, Paris saw him – the hated figure of Achilles, now dismounted from his chariot and fighting in the shadow of the walls. He was alone in the midst of a crowd of Trojans, who refused to attack or retreat as they formed a circle about the most feared of all the Greeks.
Paris sneered with hatred as he fitted the well-made arrow to his bow.
‘Lord Apollo, hear my prayer. If you will make my aim straight – if you will aid me in killing Achilles this day – you shall have the fat and thigh bones of twenty calves before darkness falls.’
As the words left his lips he heard a rushing of wind coming, it seemed, from a great distance. He closed his left eye and took aim down the shaft of the arrow, letting the bronze tip wander this way and that until he found Achilles again, causing murderous havoc with his sword among the Trojan spearmen. His heart quickened in his chest and at the same time the firmness of his grip wavered, letting the point of the arrow drift alarmingly away from its target. He felt the sweat on his fingertips and knew his grip on the base of the arrow was beginning to slip. Unless he regained command of himself the shot would be wasted. And then the wind grew louder and a moment later he felt it fanning his hair and cloak as a great shadow fell over him.
The noise of battle raged about Odysseus and Eperitus. Having seen Achilles leap down from his chariot and plunge into the thick of battle, they had followed the prince’s example and rushed in after him on foot, only to be held back by the fleeing Trojans as they turned and fought, heartened by the arrival of reinforcements from the gate and supporting fire from the archers on the battlements. The Greek infantry caught up and charged into the hastily formed Trojan line, but were greeted by a hail of arrows that stopped them as effectively as if they had run into a stone wall. They charged again and the struggle that followed was as frenzied and confused as any battle Eperitus had ever known. The Trojans fought with a fury Eperitus had rarely seen before, and which was only matched by the determination of the Greeks to follow Achilles through the Scaean Gate and into the streets of Troy.
Eperitus pushed the head of his spear into a Trojan’s chest, only for another to leap into the gap and swing at him with a double-headed axe. Eperitus met the shivering blow with the boss of his shield, before despatching his attacker with a rapid thrust of his spear as he pulled back his axe for a second time. Stepping over his body, he was met by a young lad armed with nothing more than a crude leather shield and a dagger.
‘So this is the level Troy has been lowered to,’ he said, staring at his enemy. ‘Sending boys on to the battlefield with nothing more than knives.’
There was no fear on the lad’s face, only angry determination as he rushed at Eperitus with his blade held before him. Almost without thinking, Eperitus reached across and grabbed the boy’s wrist, twisting his arm aside until, with a shout of pain, he dropped the dagger into the trampled grass. Eperitus kicked the weapon away just as Odysseus appeared at his side. Eurybates, Polites and Antiphus were with him.
‘Come on,’ the king shouted over the din of battle. ‘We’ve got to reach Achilles before the Trojans overpower him and drag his body into the city walls.’
He plunged into the press of Trojans, followed by the others.
‘Go home to your mother,’ Eperitus said, releasing the lad’s wrist.
He shoved him forcefully back towards his comrades, then followed the giant form of Polites into the fray. The Ithacans were cutting their way man by man through the swarming Trojans, and as their enemies were slowly pushed back, Eperitus caught a glimpse of Achilles ahead of them, fighting alone against a press of spearmen. Any other man would have fallen beneath such numbers. And yet no other man possessed Achilles’s all-consuming lust for glory, a lust that could only be satisfied by taking the gates of Troy and denying the doom his own mother had laid on his shoulders. But his savage fury was met with equal determination on the part of the Trojans, who were prepared to sacrifice everything in the defence of their homes and families, even to the point of sending boys into battle. Watching them throw themselves at the unstoppable Achilles, Eperitus realized that such men could never be defeated by the Greeks. They had a cause worth dying for, whereas Agamemnon’s army had forgotten why it had come to Ilium in the first place. Its leaders cared for nothing more than their own personal quests for glory, and pride alone would never give them victory.
Then Eperitus sensed a shadow fall across the battle. Others felt it too and looked up, only to see clear blue skies overhead. But as Eperitus lifted his gaze to the crowded battlements, he thought he saw a giant presence warping the air above the archers there, distorting the emptiness over their heads so that it seemed to shimmer like the heat haze on a distant horizon. No physical form was visible, but Eperitus knew a god was standing on the walls of Troy and casting its shadow over the fighting below. Then his eyes fell on Paris, who was leaning over the parapet with his bow pulled back, and suddenly Eperitus could see the shadowy outline of a tall figure standing over him, moving back its right hand as the Trojan prince drew the bow, and bending its head just as Paris bent his own head to take aim along the line of the arrow. Then the bowstring sang out and the missile struck its target.
Achilles cried out in pain. It was a sound Eperitus had never heard from Achilles before, nor had he ever expected to: high and clear and filled with extraordinary anguish, then slipping into despair as the great warrior knew his end had finally come, just as his beloved mother had warned him it would. He staggered, clutching at the long black arrow that had buried itself in his right heel, then fell.
As he disappeared among the circle of his enemies the clash of weapons and the shouts of men drained away, every Trojan and Greek sensing that something strange and terrible had happened. Then the shadow departed from the battlefield and the heaviness lifted from men’s hearts. Paris leaned over the wall and shook his fist.
‘That’s for Hector! And just as you mistreated his corpse, so will I mistreat yours. Bring the body to me!’
‘No!’ Odysseus exclaimed, running towards the place where Achilles had fallen.
The battle erupted back into life. Eperitus dashed after Odysseus, who was cutting down any man who dared stand in his way; they were followed by Polites, Eurybates, Antiphus and a handful of Ithacans. Within moments they had driven back the Trojans surrounding Achilles and, while the others fought to hold them off, Odysseus and Eperitus knelt beside the fallen prince.
Odysseus removed Achilles’s helmet and took his head in his lap, brushing the long blond hair from his face. As his fingers stroked across his forehead, Achilles’s eyes flickered open and looked up at the Ithacan king.
‘Odysseus!’ he whispered, trying to smile despite the pain of approaching death. ‘Odysseus, my friend, it seems Calchas was right after all. And yet it’s better this way, I can see that now. The honour of killing Hector was given to my hand, though in the end it was a victory for hatred and revenge rather than for Achilles the man; but the glory of taking Troy must belong to another. To you, I think. And now I’m going down to Hades, where a man’s soul knows only misery.’
‘But your name will remain here on earth,’ Odysseus said. ‘Here among the world of the living.’
Achilles gripped Odysseus’s arms with the last of his strength, and suddenly there was doubt in his eyes. Doubt, at the last, that he had achieved immortality.
‘Can you be sure of that?’ he gasped.
‘Yes,’ Odysseus reassured him. ‘Yes, Achilles, you’ve earned that much at least.’
‘But . . .’ Achilles’s back arched with a stab of pain, forcing Odysseus to hold him tight until the convulsion ebbed away again. ‘But are you the only one who has come to save my
body from the Trojans?’
As he spoke, a thunderous shout of anger rose above the cacophony of battle. Odysseus and Eperitus looked over their shoulders to see the titanic form of Ajax striding towards them from the Greek lines. Forgetting his wounds and exhaustion in his fury, he brushed aside Trojans as if they were nothing more than children.
Unaware of Ajax’s approach, Achilles reached up and clutched at Odysseus’s shoulder, his fingers tightening with pain and his eyes suddenly wide with fear.
‘He’s coming, Odysseus! Hermes is coming for my soul! Lean closer, quickly; let my final words in life be to you, my friend.’
Odysseus bent down and placed his ear to Achilles’s lips, which moved briefly and were still. An instant later Ajax burst in among the encircled Ithacans, his great shield bristling with arrows and his sword running with fresh gore as he stared down at the body of his cousin.
‘He’s dead,’ Odysseus announced, passing his fingers over Achilles’s eyelids and closing them for ever.
Ajax, his dirt-stained cheeks wet with tears, bent low and lifted the fallen warrior over his shoulder.
‘Come, Odysseus, we must take him back to the ships. I can carry his body, but I can’t easily fight Trojans at the same time. You and Eperitus must protect me.’
He turned and ran back towards the Greek line, while Odysseus and Eperitus launched themselves at the wall of Trojans.
Chapter Forty-Three
THETIS
Eperitus lay on his side, supporting his head on his fist as he watched the shadows moving across the walls of his hut. Astynome was beside him, her breathing barely audible as she slept. He looked down at her chest as it gently rose and fell; the skin was orange in the firelight and every dimple and line was carefully picked out by the soft, wavering glow. Her face was turned away from him and he spent a few moments admiring her profile – the straight line of her jaw, the small nose and the closed eyes with their long, black lashes. A few strands of dark hair were stuck to the thin film of sweat on her forehead, while the rest of it lay tousled across the rolled-up furs that pillowed her head. He reached out and brushed a lock of hair back behind her ear, half hoping she would wake, but she did not.
It was now seventeen days since Paris had shot Achilles before the Scaean Gate, his hand guided by Apollo. After the battle there were many who claimed to have seen the god standing atop the battlements. None had, of course, but it was beyond doubt that the Olympian archer had finally avenged the death of his son, Tenes, whom Achilles had killed ten years before in the first battle of the war. Tomorrow the period of mourning set by Agamemnon would be over and the great warrior’s body burnt. And it was about time, Eperitus thought. Unlike the divine protection that had preserved and restored Hector’s body during the days of abuse by Achilles, the Phthian prince’s own corpse had been afforded no such blessing. Despite every effort of the Greeks, the process of corruption was well advanced and the white sheet that covered the body could not disguise its foul stench. Only the faithful Myrmidons who guarded their prince could endure the smell, while the rest of the army said the rapid decay had been sent by the gods in revenge for Achilles’s impious treatment of Hector.
Eperitus did not agree with them. Neither did Odysseus. Despite his excesses, Achilles was too great a warrior to earn the loathing of the Olympians. Few men could boast an immortal mother or a full set of divinely made armour, and none could claim to have killed as many famed opponents as Achilles had. Nor would the Trojans have fought with such savagery to claim the body of any other man. With Paris urging them on, they had pursued the Greeks back across the fords of the Scamander and up the slopes beyond it to the plain above. Warriors had died in their hundreds on both sides, giving their lives for possession of a single corpse, devoid of its precious spirit. While Ajax had carried Achilles’s lifeless body across his massive shoulders – oblivious to the deadly hail of arrows and the shouts of the victorious Trojans – Odysseus and Eperitus had fought like trapped lions to protect his retreat, assisted by the strength and size of Polites, the bow of Antiphus and the spear of Eurybates. Finally, as Paris prepared his troops for another attack, Zeus himself intervened in the shape of a sudden storm, darkening the skies with clouds and calling on the winds to drive sheets of rain into the faces of the Trojans as the Greeks slipped away.
Astynome had come to his tent that same night, desperate to know that he had survived. She had treated his wounds then made love to him – tenderly, so as not to reopen his many cuts, but with a strong passion driven by relief at being in his arms again. The fierceness of the fighting and the inescapable closeness of death had given their relationship an urgency that neither had experienced in love before, making Eperitus hate the times when she had to leave him and return to her master in Troy. But until the war was over he knew this was how they would have to live – furtive meetings at night, spending their short time together in his bed until dawn, when she would seek out her friends the farmer and his son, who would take her back to the one place Eperitus could not join her. Not, that was, unless he gave in to her pleading and accepted his father’s offer of a meeting to discuss peace – an offer she had reminded him of on the evening after Achilles’s death and again tonight, as she lay in his arms after making love. And again he had refused.
‘But there’s no other way to end this war,’ she had protested, slapping his chest in frustration and looking even more beautiful in her anger. ‘Troy can never be victorious, not with the Amazon queen dead and what’s left of the Aethiope army in full retreat back south. But neither can the cursed Greeks, now Paris has killed Achilles. It’s a stalemate. Surely if your father can bring about peace then you have a duty to listen to him – a duty to Odysseus, to me, and even to yourself.’
‘I don’t trust Apheidas, for one thing,’ he had replied, ‘and I will not allow him to think I’ve forgiven the things he did, or that my shame at being his son is in any way reduced. The answer’s no, Astynome, now and every other time you ask me.’
‘Then I will ask you no more,’ she had said, brushing the tears from her eyes as she lay down next to him.
But as he listened to her rapid breathing gradually slow down until sleep overtook her, he knew that she was right. There was a growing sense of frustration among the ordinary Greek soldiers, bordering on open rebellion as they began to think that the war would never end and they would not see their homes and families ever again. Achilles’s very presence was worth an army in itself, and now that he had gone down to the halls of Hades, the camp seemed empty and subdued. Whatever men may have thought about the ruthless Phthian and his excessive pride, none would deny that he had been the fighting soul of the army. And now that he was dead the army’s hope had died with him. Despairing soldiers were daring to defy their captains, while some even deserted, preferring to brave the hostile lands about them in a hope of finding a way home than spend any more time under the doomed command of Agamemnon. On one occasion an angry mob of Cretans caught Calchas sneaking away from Agamemnon’s tent and threatened to kill him unless he confessed he had lied about the war ending in the tenth year. The priest had refused and only the arrival of Agamemnon’s own bodyguards saved his life. The King of Men had one of the Cretans strung up as an example to the rest of the camp and a resentful peace had followed.
But it was more than the despair of the Greeks that convinced Eperitus the war would not be won by either side. As he lay staring into the twitching shadows cast by the fire, he could not help but think of the boy soldier he had faced in the battle before the Scaean Gate. Any city that was prepared to arm children with daggers and throw them against seasoned warriors would not give in until every man who could hold a weapon was dead. And as Astynome never ceased to remind him, all the Trojans needed to do was wait behind their god-built walls until the Greeks found a way to break them down, or gave up and sailed home.
He thought of the boy again and was consoled by the knowledge that he had not killed him. Achilles would not have th
ought twice about hewing that young head from its shoulders in his all-consuming rampage towards glory – the same glory that Eperitus had once hankered after with all his heart. But no more. All he wanted now was to take Astynome back with him to Ithaca and let his name be preserved by their children rather than his deeds on the battlefield. He kissed her on the shoulder and lay down to sleep.
Odysseus was dreaming of Ithaca. He was in the bed he had made for Penelope and himself, with its four thick posts that rose from floor to ceiling and which were inlaid with patterns of gold, silver and ivory. One of the posts was the bole of an old olive tree that had been there before he had extended the palace, and which he had played in as a child. Staring up at the smooth ceiling, he could see the stars that had been painted there, the constellations positioned just as they had been in the month when the bedroom had been finished, forever a spring evening. And beside him he could feel the presence of his wife.
He turned to look at her. She was naked beneath the furs and in his dream he could feel the warmth emanating from her body. But her handsome features were sad and regretful.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘I tried to keep the thieves from your house, Odysseus, but you were gone too long. Now Eupeithes’s son is king in your place.’
‘Antinous?’ Odysseus exclaimed, propping himself up on one elbow.
‘Yes, Antinous,’ Penelope had replied, rolling over so that her back was turned to him. ‘My new husband.’
Odysseus reached out to touch her and woke, his arm half-stretched out from beneath his furs. He pulled it back and took a deep breath, unsettled but relieved to realize it was only a dream. He stroked his beard and closed his eyes, trying to recall Penelope’s face. But she was gone.
And then his senses told him he was not alone in his hut.
He flung aside his furs and leapt from his bed, reaching for the sword that hung in its scabbard from the wall above.