The War At Troy

by Lindsay Clarke

  Achilles had been watching the progress of the battle from the stern of his ship. His heart was agitated by the din and he was aware of his Myrmidons glancing towards him as they chafed against their involuntary idleness. From somewhere far down the strand he heard a cry of dismay rise from the Trojan lines -- one of their heroes must be down in the fight, but among that confused mass of men hacking at each other hand-to-hand before the ships, it was impossible to make out who it was. Then he saw Patroclus hurrying back towards him along the strand, his tunic stained with blood. It took a little time for Patroclus to catch his breath and when he looked up to where Achilles gazed down at him from the high side of the ship, his eyes were running with tears.

  ‘Our friends are falling,’ he gasped. ‘Diomedes, Odysseus and Agamemnon are all wounded. I’ve just bound up a gash that an arrow opened in the leg of my friend Eurypylus. He asked me to do it so that he could get back to the fight.’

  Achilles looked away along the strand towards the battle where the Trojans had recovered from whatever loss had briefly shocked them and were now attacking the beached ships as though each one was a citadel. ‘Eurypylus was always brave,’ he said without emotion.

  ‘He made me ashamed,’ Patroclus shouted up at him. ‘In the name of the gods, Achilles, we are needed out there. If we don’t send them help the Argives will be pushed into the sea. It is happening now -- even as we stand here.’

  When Achilles merely nodded impassively, Patroclus lost all patience with him. ‘You’re my friend,’ he cried, ‘and I suffered for you when your pride was injured. Since then I’ve stood beside you in your stubborn anger as I’ve stood beside you in battle many times. But I won’t dishonour myself for you.’

  Still Achilles said nothing.

  ‘What’s happened to you?’ Patroclus bitterly demanded. ‘Is it just hurt pride that’s keeping you from the battle or have you lost your nerve?’

  Achilles eyes widened. His nostrils flared. ‘You know why I withhold myself from this battle, and that I have just cause.’

  ‘Just cause, yes,’ Patroclus retorted, ‘and may you take much satisfaction from it when all your friends are dead, and people are saying, “There goes Achilles, son of Peleus, who might have been a great hero but wouldn’t fight for his comrades at Troy, and because of that the war was lost and many good men died -- though he claims he had just cause!”’

  Achilles turned his face angrily away only to see Phoenix and the whole company of his Myrmidons staring up at him in silent reproach.

  In that moment a despairing moan was carried along the strand by the wind beating off the sea. All of them shifted their eyes that way and saw the first of the ships catch fire. The flames gusted and flickered against the grey afternoon sky before the blaze took hold and the air around the high prow blackened with smoke. They could hear men screaming. They caught the smell of burning pitch.

  ‘It has begun,’ said Patroclus. His eyes flashed at his friend. ‘I’m going to join the fight, and I believe that your Myrmidons will come with me. Lead us, Achilles.’

  Achilles stared down into the stern entreaty of his eyes. For an anguished moment, he was recalling the day when they had first met as boys on the mountain in Thessaly -- how they had quarrelled over something that neither could now remember, and beaten each other with bare fists till their noses bled and their limbs were bruised. Never since that day had they quarrelled again. If need be, they would have stood together against the world. Yet the world was forcing its way between them now.

  Urgently Patroclus beseeched him again. ‘Lead us.’

  Achilles swallowed and shook his head. ‘I have sworn that I will not fight for Agamemnon.’ He heard the muttering of the Myrmidons about him. ‘But whatever else men say, let it not be said that I stood between a friend and his honour. Go to the fight, Patroclus. Take as many of my men as will go with you, and may the gods be with you all.’ He would have turned away then, but his friend had not yet done with him.

  ‘It’s you that the Trojans fear,’ Patroclus shouted up at him. ‘If you won’t come with us, at least lend me your armour so that when I lead the Myrmidons into battle, Hector and his brothers will think that Achilles has returned to the field.’

  Achilles smiled wanly down at him. He was thinking that if he could have his wish it would be that Agamemnon and the rest of that Argive rabble had taken to their ships, and only he and Patroclus and the Myrmidons were left to take the city. That would have been a day for poets to sing of till the end of time. But he drew in his breath and raised his voice so that all could hear him. ‘Take my armour. Take my chariot and my horses. Take my men into the battle with you and do for both of us what I wish I was free to do with you. Drive the Trojans back beyond the wall, and when it is done, come back to me unharmed.’ Then he turned to the Myrmidons. ‘As for the rest of you, go out and fight as though you fought for me, and give my friend a great victory today.’

  Afterwards, at the end of that terrible day, men spoke in hushed voices of the deeds that had been done. They told how the hearts of the Argives fighting by the burning ship had lifted at the shout of the Myrmidons coming to their aid. They told how Patroclus had launched his assault at the Paeonian spearmen, killing their king, and shaking the hearts of his followers with the fear that it was Achilles himself who had returned to the fray. They told how, at the shout of that dreaded name, the Paeonians fell back, pushing others with them, so that their recoil began a confused retreat that quickly became a rout as Menelaus, Ajax and Idomeneus took advantage of the shock to push their own troops forward.

  Having come within yards of burning the whole fleet, the Trojans were now scrambling to get back out of the killing-field through the gate that they had forced. But they had already been fighting for the best part of that long day, and their weary arms and legs were no match for the fresh strength of the Myrmidons bearing down on them. Within minutes the trench beyond the stockade became a writhing pit of screaming men, smashed chariots and wounded horses.

  With the charioteer Automedon at his side, urging on the mighty horses of Achilles, Patroclus led the charge beyond the wall, slaughtering everyone who came within his reach. As one Trojan charioteer strove to turn out of his path, Patroclus speared him through the side of the jaw, smashing bone and teeth, and then, using the spear as a lever, he swung the man up over the chariot rail to drop him in the dirt like an angler gaffing a fish. The terrible sight spread terror among the men around him. In the confusion only Sarpedon of the Lycians found the courage to confront the Argive champion. He hurled a spear which flew wide of Patroclus but struck his trace-horse in the neck and as the animal stumbled, its comrades reared, snorting and screaming, hooves flashing at the air. Automedon slashed through the outriggers traces till it fell away, and then struggled to regain control while Patroclus balanced himself and hurled his long spear. It burst through Sarpedon s rib-cage. And not even Hector could now stop the Trojans in their frantic scramble for the safety of the city walls.

  When he was again capable of thought, and had listened to the hushed account of how his friend came to die, Achilles thought he knew exactly what must have happened in those moments. He had led too many such charges himself not to know that when a man sees a confused mass of warriors fleeing before him, his head swirls and blazes with the intoxication of his battle- ardour. At such a time, though he may be only minutes away from death, a man can begin to feel immortal. He can believe, as Patroclus must have come to believe, that if his men are with him, all things are possible, and that precisely because he believes, his men will follow. And so, forgetful of Achilles’ instructions that he should return once the Trojans were pushed back beyond the wall, Patroclus advanced against Troy as if the city might be taken single-handed.

  He leapt out of his chariot near an old fig tree at the place where the walls of the city were known to be weakest. Three times, with the Trojans hurling missiles down at him and calling on Apollo for aid and protection, he tried to climb the wall
and three times he was thrust back down. He was recovering from his third fall on the flat ground below the ridge when Hector sallied out through the Scaean Gate leading a counter-attack, and came careering towards him.

  Looking up, Patroclus saw the horses bearing down on him through the dwindling light. Instinctively, he picked up a stone and hurled it at Hector’s driver with such accuracy that it smashed into his head and sent him toppling backwards from the chariot. As the horses swept on past, Hector leapt from the chariot and the two heroes were joined in fierce hand-to-hand combat for a time until a surge in the press of men fighting around them pushed them apart.

  Moments later, Menelaus glanced up from the man he had just killed and saw Patroclus a few yards away. Through the stones and arrows falling round them, he saw him lurch forward with his arms flying up as though he had been struck in the back. Yet no one was standing close by, so men would say later that Patroclus must have been pushed by Apollo. The high-crested helmet of Achilles fell from his head to roll away beneath the hoofs of a panic-stricken horse. Patroclus seemed stunned and winded by the blow. As he stood shaking his dazed head, a Dardanian foot-soldier came up behind him and thrust a spear between his shoulder blades. With a sickening wrench, the man pulled out his spear but was knocked aside before he could strike again.

  Menelaus saw his wounded friend fall slowly to the ground. As Patroclus turned, gasping, trying to push himself back up, his glazed eyes must have focussed briefly on the looming figure of Hector. He collapsed back beneath him and, for a few seconds, it was as if all the din of battle stopped to witness the moment in which Hector raised his spear and thrust it down into the belly of the fallen man.

  Almost an hour later, Achilles was standing in the failing light, gazing out across the dark stretch of the bay towards Tenedos when he heard someone running down the strand towards him. All through the late afternoon, his chest had been heavy with trepidation. His fears had darkened with the day, and now, when he looked into the mask of grief and foreboding which was the face of Nestor’s son Antilochus, he knew at once what he was about to be told.

  The ground felt unstable under his feet. His breath stuck fast in his throat. From a long distance, as though the sound was distorted by the wind, he heard Antilochus speaking. Patroclus was dead. A spear-thrust in the back. Then another, from Hector, through the stomach. Antilochus was sobbing as he spoke. Patroclus was dead. The armour was being stripped from his limbs when Ajax and Menelaus had come up to make a stand over the body. They were determined not to yield an inch of ground and the fight had still been unresolved when Antilochus was told to run from the field and bring the news to Achilles. Patroclus was dead.

  The wind gusted under a turbid sky. Somewhere the sea was chanting out its grievances.

  Achilles’ legs sagged under him. He was on his knees, staring down at the dark sand. Forearms crossed, fists clenched at his shoulders, he was rocking his body as though to soothe some wounded thing he clutched to his chest. Then his hands opened. He reached down, grabbed at sand to fill them, and poured it, again and again, in a thick, choking cloud over his hair and neck.

  He could hear Antilochus sobbing. And then word spread among the captive women who had lived with Patroclus and learned to love him, and one of them began to wail. Soon the gloom was hideous with their keening. For a time only Achilles was silent. Then the breath shuddered out of him, struggling to free a sound that was locked inside his throat. When at last the cry came, it began as a primitive, creaking moan that widened to a howl and became a bellow of anguish. For Achilles, son of Peleus, sacker of cities, slayer of men, had learned at last the price of honour.

  The Gods at War

  The body of Patroclus might never have been recovered if Achilles had not found the will to convert his grief into a savage ritual of violence. Hearing the din of battle come closer through the dusk, he climbed one of the wooden towers in the palisade and looked down on the toiling mass of armoured men. Everywhere across the plain the Argives were in retreat, pushed back towards their ships once again by a Trojan army that had drawn new strength from the killing of Patroclus. Where the clash was fiercest, he could just make out the figures of Menelaus and Ajax desperately refusing to give ground, and he knew that they must be fighting to protect the dead body of his friend.

  From a place far beyond the reach of reason, Achilles fetched so loud a shout that it rose above the noise of combat and echoed out across the lines of fighting men. The shout was a single protracted word -- ‘Hector!’ -- and when he repeated it, louder and more urgently, the men struggling above the body of Patroclus looked up to see whence this great shout had come.

  What they saw was a dark figure at the high point of the parapet with the last rays of dying sunlight shining through his hair.

  Immediately the name of Achilles ran in an awe-stricken murmur along both lines. As though it were some great engine seizing up, the battle stopped in its tracks. Again the shout of Achilles boomed out through the reddening dusk like the voice of a god. It filled the Argives with fresh heart and the Trojans with dread. Again the battle turned. Hector was forced to give ground, and in the thickening gloom, Menelaus and Ajax were able to carry the body of Patroclus from the field.

  Hector had already stripped the body-armour of Achilles from that poor corpse. Now they took the torn and bloody tunic from him and washed the dirt and blood from his body. Then they anointed him with olive oil and stopped up the gashes of his wounds with unguents and laid him out on a bier covered with a soft sheet and a white mantle. Achilles and his Myrmidons gathered about the body, and all night long men passed before it, weeping with grief.

  Menelaus and Ajax came to Achilles with their stories of how bravely his friend had led the host against the foe, and how they had held the ground above the body so that Hector should not have it. Achilles listened to them unspeaking and, already in a place that none of them could reach, he remained silent later when Odysseus came to him, seeking to give what comfort he could.

  Throughout the night he looked down on the body of his friend, recalling the countless times they had fought side by side, covering each other with shield and sword, delighting in their triumph as the enemy ran before them, and then washing and binding each other’s wounds when the fighting was done. There had been a time once when Achilles was laid low by fever, thrashing about for days in a delirium of dreams, only to wake at last and see the face of his friend looking down on him, haggard with anxiety, and then softening suddenly into a smile of relief. And there had been the doldrum days when for one reason or other Agamemnon lost the will to fight, and Achilles and Patroclus had vented their impatient scorn together, or withdrawn with the women who loved them, to sing and dance and make love as though, out of a prophetic certainty that neither of them would live for long, they must cram each hour with passionate intensity.

  The memories only intensified his grief and the grief intensified his rage. So as he sat beside his friend’s body throughout that night, Achilles forged himself into an instrument with a single purpose. As a boy at Cheiron’s school, many destinies might have been possible for him. His singing voice was among the most beautiful that had ever echoed around the gorge and he might have grown up to become a bard, singing of the deeds of other men. Under Cheiron’s tutelage, he had shown a gift for healing and acquired a wide knowledge of the medicinal power of herbs, so he might have spent his life tending wounds rather than giving them, saving life rather than taking it. He was a fine hunter and dancer too and if Odysseus had not brought him to this banquet of violence which was the war at Troy, he might have passed a tranquil life on Skyros in the arms of his first love Deidameia, watching their son Pyrrhus grow to manhood.

  For Achilles also had a huge talent for love. He had loved both his parents but life had torn his heart apart between them. He had loved his time on Skyros with his wife and infant son but life had stolen him away from them. He had loved Briseis, the captive of his spear, but she too had been taken from
him. Above all, he had loved Patroclus, and now Patroclus too was gone. So there was, in the whole desolate landscape of his heart, no longer any place for love. He would become, utterly and completely, what the world had always most wanted him to be. And then he would be done with it.

  During the course of that night the rain began to fall. It carried on falling into the day, heavy and wind-driven.

  Not having slept at all, Achilles rose from the chair where he sat and took out from the coffer where it was stored, the richly worked suit of armour which had been his mother’s last gift to him. A craftsman skilled in the service of Hephaistos had fashioned the corselet and greaves in bronze and tin, and worked them with gold and silver until they seemed forged from light. The helmet fitted closely about his temples, the cheek-pieces were intricately blazoned, and it was ridged with a golden crest. And the shield that Thetis had given him was a masterwork of the armourer’s art, which portrayed within its glittering broad circle, images of the whole pattern of life that his mother had once wished for him. For between the rim which depicted the River Ocean surrounding the world, and the central boss where shone the sun, moon and stars, Achilles could contemplate a vision of the human realm in which war was only one activity among many others, and where the larger part was given over to the peaceful arts of ploughing and reaping, of tending flocks and cattle, of harvesting the vintage, of music and dance.