Troy: A Brand of Fire

by Ben Blake

Chapter Sixteen

  At the Ships

  Soldiers were working along much of the road from Troy down to the beach. Mursili thought they were Idaians, the ones usually in armour lacquered green and blue, though today they wore only shirts and kilts with swords belted at their waists. Short swords, he noticed, barely a foot and a half from hilt to point, with fullers half an inch thick to give the weapon strength. Bronze cracked easily when struck. Iron did not. Mursili would make much finer swords, now the promised supplies had begun to arrive.

  He thought the soldiers were surveying the eastern channel of the Scamander River. The shallower parts could be dredged, and the earth and stones piled on the eastern bank to make it higher, a more formidable barrier. Or to provide shelter for archers, he supposed. Mursili wasn’t a warrior, had never been in a battle in his life, but you couldn’t live in Hattusa and not pick up the basics of war and how it was fought. The Hittites had built their empire on military power. There was hardly a family in the land without at least one son in the army.

  Troy had not constructed its power from warfare, but the signs were unmistakable. The city was preparing for war.

  It wasn’t just the men at the river. Other soldiers had spent several days clearing undergrowth from the slopes of the ridge on which Troy sat, stripping it right down to the rock-strewn soil. To keep spotters from coming too close to the walls, of course. More were at work in Bunarbi; Mursili had seen them walking out, not long after dawn two days running. Probably they were strengthening the village’s wooden walls, and digging the moat deeper or wider or both.

  Fletchers and bowyers had suddenly begun to scour the eastern hills, looking for good wood to make arrows and bows. Mursili had wondered why they didn’t cut the willow and tamarisk along the Scamander’s banks, since the trees there were closer and grew straight.

  “That river wanders across the Plain as it is,” Phereclus had told him when he asked. “Take away the trees, and the Scamander might break into twenty channels when the spring floods come, instead of the two it has now. That would be bad for the horses, do you see?”

  Mursili saw. He saw it would be bad for defence as well, if instead of two deep braids the river formed two dozen shallow ones. Attacking Greeks wouldn’t have much trouble forcing a way across those. He didn’t think Phereclus realised that. The Colchian was clever, and becoming a good friend, but he thought of everything in terms of the sea.

  Mursili stood aside as three wagons creaked slowly up the road, each one drawn by four oxen. They didn’t move fast – a man could walk more quickly – but once oxen were moving, they just kept plodding on. They’d trample right over Mursili if he didn’t get out of the way. The wheels were wet from the ford, but they still raised clouds of dust behind them, and he tied a cloth over his mouth and nose before he went on.

  The Bay of Troy was as busy as always. Mursili estimated there were about thirty ships in view, all but a handful drawn up on the gritty beach. Some of those were unloading cargo or taking it on: others just lay there like seals on rocks, waiting for their crews to return from wasting their wages in the taverns and reed houses of Troy. A few were heading north, out to the Hellespont and the Greensea beyond it, taking advantage of the Meltemi’s absence. The north wind hadn’t blown for several days now. Mursili wondered if he should see an omen in that, and if so whether it was a good sign or bad.

  Not far from where the road ended, right where the three Argive kings had beached their ships, another vessel now sat. It rested on logs for rolling, but ropes held it in place for now. Some two hundred men stood in a wide semi-circle around the prow, talking among themselves. White and gold armour flashed brightly in the crowd, the colours of the Apollonians, and Mursili realised that Hector himself must be here.

  He was looking for a different man though, and when he found it Mursili skirted around the crowd towards him. They were alike, in a way. Both foreigners, both here at Troy as the summer waned. Their reasons might be different, but then, reasons usually were.

  “Have you been aboard?” he asked.

  Crescas nodded. “Until Phereclus told me to get off his deck before he had me thrown over the side.”

  “You like it, then.”

  “It makes the ships I grew up with look like children’s toys,” the Argive said. “I’m going to have to take a look at Phereclus’ shipyard, see the hulls before they’re finished. That boat has a keel.” He pronounced the word carefully, as though unused to it. “Apparently it’s how the ships in Colchis hold together in waves that would break a Greek vessel apart.”

  Mursili couldn’t see the keel, whatever that was. Or if he could, he didn’t recognise it. But just glancing from the new galley to the more usual Greek ones, resting on the strand, he could see differences. Phereclus’ creation was longer, perhaps by six or eight yards, and the stern swept up higher than any other on the beach. Something was new about the mast as well. He had to stare at it for a long moment before he saw it was square-cut, not round as on Argive boats. Whether that mattered, he didn’t know. He was even more clueless about ships than he was about warfare.

  “Your Luwian has improved,” Crescas said. “It was a year before I could speak the language as well as you do.”

  “I learn quickly,” Mursili said.

  He shouldn’t be curt to this man. It was Crescas’ ships that were bringing iron to Troy for Mursili to work. Everything Mursili hoped to do here depended on him. Success would mean an honoured place, a reasonable amount of wealth, perhaps even marriage to a distressingly tall Trojan woman. Failure led to disgrace and probably exile from the city, in which case he’d have nowhere to go. Who would take on a Hittite smith who couldn’t shape metal?

  The crowd was growing, as more people came down from the city or wandered along the beach from their own ships. The Apollonians gathered around the ship, forming a loose cordon, though they weren’t fully armed. Mursili didn’t think they’d need to be. None of the watchers showed an urge to push forward. They knew what would happen to anyone who challenged the Apollonians.

  “Ah,” Crescas said.

  Mursili had seen it too: a pair of figures had appeared on the prow of the ship, standing by the rail. One was Phereclus: his thinning hair looked lush from down here. The other was Hector, unmistakeable in his size and bearing, and the whole crowd sent up a spontaneous cheer. Hector asked for quiet with raised hands, smiling down on them all.

  “Normally we wouldn’t bother to hold a ceremony for the launch of a boat,” Hector began. “But this – what is it?”

  Phereclus had leaned across to murmur in the prince’s ear. A moment later Hector grinned.

  “It seems I’ve transgressed,” he said. “This is a ship, not a boat. Since it’s our esteemed shipbuilder from Colchis who tells me this, perhaps I ought to listen, don’t you think?”

  There was laughter, which Hector allowed to ride for a moment. He really is good, Mursili thought as he watched. Hector knew how to play a crowd, could even laugh at himself and use that to gain sympathy and support. In Hattusa the princes would never have bothered, except with the soldiers, and even then Mursili doubted any did so as easily as Hector.

  “This ship is different,” Hector resumed when there was silence again. “It’s the first completed by that esteemed shipbuilder I mentioned, namely Phereclus here. He’s been teaching our own shipwrights the tricks of Colchis. This will be the finest ship on the Greensea, my friends, and in a few short years we’ll have the finest fleet besides.

  “But the first thing to do is let a crew sail her. The men who’ll do so are down among you now, waiting to roll her into the water. In a moment we’ll stand aside and let them get to it, but first this vessel needs a name. I thought we should let Phereclus choose. My friend?”

  “She’s the Qulha,” Phereclus said. “An ancient name for my homeland.”

  “Qulha it is,” Hector agreed. “Move away then, everyone. Phereclus, she’s your ship.”

  The crowd didn’t move b
ack much, if at all, but the Colchian nodded to someone Mursili couldn’t see and a moment later a bass voice began shouting orders. Fifty men took positions by the ropes which held the newly-named ship steady atop the wooden rollers. At another yell axes thudded down to sever the ropes, and slowly the logs creaked as Qulha began to move.

  “Hold her!” Phereclus shouted from the deck. The sailors were already doing their best, muscles straining as they hauled on the ropes in four long lines, fighting to keep the ship straight. Beside Phereclus the prince kept his balance easily, not even holding to the rail for support. That must be what half a lifetime riding chariots did for you.

  The stentorian voice snapped more orders and on Mursili’s side the men let tension off the ropes, so the ship was pulled the other way. She was moving quite fast when there was a mighty splash and water sprayed up from the stern as it entered the sea. Most of the crowd cheered again.

  “I wonder what will happen,” Crescas said, “when the Greeks see that ship sailing the Greensea.”

  That was a thought Mursili had already considered. The Argives would sink her, of course, especially now their relations with Troy were so poor. Though in fact they wouldn’t even need that excuse. Greek prosperity depended wholly on mastery of the seas, just as Crete had relied upon it until half a century before. Any potential challenge to that dominance needed to be crushed at once. Surely Priam and his advisors knew that.

  They had still launched though. Perhaps they knew something Mursili didn’t. He hoped so.

  “Just as long as they don’t sink the ships with my iron on board,” he said. He’d thought earlier that Phereclus’ mind focused entirely on the sea, but the truth was that Mursili was just as obsessed by his own work. Phereclus had said something to that effect the day they’d met, in fact.

  Mursili pondered that, and then asked, “Do you think the Argives really will attack, then?”

  The Greek-born merchant looked at him. “Do you really think they won’t? War is what Argives do. It’s how they respond to any threat or problem. Of course they’re going to attack.”

  There was a sinking sensation in Mursili’s stomach. He didn’t want to find himself in the middle of a war, not here in windy Troy. He’d expected to find tranquillity here, when he came. “Then I’d better make my swords quickly, hadn’t I?”

  “Yes,” Crescas said. He’d turned back to Qulha, now floating free in the waters of the Bay. “I think you better had.”