Fall of Kings (41 page)

“Who are you?” he rasped. “You are not my Hekabe. Are you one of the ghosts?
I tell you again, you do not frighten me!”

She said calmly, “I am Andromache, wife to Hektor.”

“Where is Hekabe?” He released her, pushing her away, and looked around him.
“She said she would wear the golden gown.”

Polydoros stepped forward and offered the old man a drink from a goblet of
gold, and Polites moved alongside Andromache. “You can go now,” he said quietly.
“I know his moods. He is living in his past, and he does not know you.”

“Hektor said the king could no longer be trusted. He did not explain
further,” Andromache said as they walked from the
megaron
out into the
fresh air.

Polites told her of the regiments’ retreat from the Scamander and the burning
of the bridges, and she listened in horror.

“But if his Eagles still obey him,” she responded, “Helikaon will be killed
when he returns to Troy.”

Polites smiled sadly. “Father no longer has any Eagles at his command.”

“But the Eagles in the
megaron…
” Her voice trailed off as the
realization struck her. “I see. They are
not
Eagles.”

“No, they are all Hektor’s men, handpicked by him to guard the king. If you
looked closely, one of them is Areoan, Hektor’s shield bearer and one of his
most loyal friends. They do not do Priam’s bidding. Any order he gives they
bring to me.”

“Then you are truly king in Troy, Polites.”

He nodded ruefully. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

“Then Hektor should not have left,” she said sharply. “I am sorry, Brother,
but you are not a military man.”

“I told him that myself. Come, let us walk.”

They wandered into the gardens, where Andromache could see the two little
boys playing, watched by their bodyguards. She longed to run to Astyanax and
take him in her arms, but instead she paced slowly beside Polites as he talked.

“People say Priam had fifty sons, you know,” he told her. “But much that’s
said about the king is nonsense. Many think my own sons were sired by him. It is
something of a joke in the city. But it is not true. My wife, Suso, lived away
from Troy for most of our marriage because she feared the king’s advances. She
died in the winter. Did you know that?” Andromache shook her head, struck dumb
with compassion for a woman she never had known. “It was a coughing fever,”
Polites explained flatly, as if talking about the weather. “But our two boys are
safe. I sent them far from the city over a year ago. No one knows where they are
but me. They were the heirs to Troy before your Astyanax was born, but they will
never know that. Even the good merchant and his wife who are raising them as
their own don’t know who they are.”

Polites paused. “But I am straying from my point, Sister. You see, Priam had
many sons, but he has been profligate with them. I know for certain he had five
murdered, probably more. And now he has lost Dios and my good friend Antiphones
and Paris, too. And Hektor, the best of us, is not here. So the only son he has
left is poor Polites, who is, as you say, not a military man.”

Andromache started to speak, but he held his hand up. “Hektor believes the
walls cannot be taken, and I think he is right. So there is nothing to do for
those of us behind them but to guard and ration the food and water and ensure
the Scaean Gate is not opened by treachery.”

“But if somehow they do break in and you fall, Polites, who will then order
the defense of the city?”

“If I fall, Andromache, its generals will defend the city.”

At that moment there was shouting from the portico, and an Eagle came running
through the open bronze gates and into the courtyard gardens. “The Mykene are
attacking the walls, lord! They have hundreds of ladders.”

Polites’ expression darkened. “Where?” he demanded.

“The east and west walls, my lord.”

“Who commands the walls today?”

“Banokles’ Scamandrians have the west, Lucan the east.”

“Then I will go to the west wall. Soldier, go and fetch my armor.” Polites
glanced at Andromache. “A prince must be seen in his armor,” he explained shyly.

He turned to go and almost collided with a redheaded man making his way
toward the palace. Andromache recognized Khalkeus the bronzesmith. The old smith
was covered with dust, and he looked exhausted, as if he had worked all night.

“I must see the king,” Khalkeus told him curtly.

“You cannot see the king now,” Polites answered.

“Then I wish to see you, Prince Polites,” Khalkeus said, folding his arms and
planting himself in the prince’s path. “It is very important. I must have more
resources. My work is vital.”

“Another time, Khalkeus. The walls are under attack.”

Khalkeus raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Under attack? With ladders?”
Polites nodded and pushed past him. “Interesting!” the smith said. “I will come
with you.”

Andromache watched them hurry off: Polites with his long white robes flapping
around skinny legs, stocky Khalkeus trotting along behind him. Her heart full of
dread, she turned and walked back to the two boys playing in the sunlit gardens.

Khalkeus followed in the footsteps of the king’s son as he made his way
through the city, flanked by a troop of Eagles. He had forgotten completely his
concerns about the forge, his interest piqued by this new turn of events. He
long since had dismissed the possibility of the enemy attacking with ladders.
The great walls were too high, and the slant of the lowest section meant that
the ladders would have to be unusually long, which would make them heavy to
maneuver and extremely unstable.

The scene on the west wall was one of calm control. The battlements were
defended strongly by the Scamandrian regiment. At only one point had the enemy
managed to climb to the top. Khalkeus watched the obnoxious Mykene renegade
Banokles and his men kill them, strip their armor, then throw the bodies back
over the wall.

He peered cautiously over the wall at the scene below. More than fifty
ladders had been thrown up against the stones. They were all just short of the
battlements, and once the enemy troops had started climbing them, their weight
made the tops of the ladders hard to dislodge. Nevertheless, the Trojan soldiers
were doing an efficient job, leaning over, hooking the ends of ladder poles to
the top rungs, and then pushing them away and down, sending enemy warriors
crashing back among their fellows, breaking arms, legs, and heads.

“Slide the ladders!” Polites yelled, seeing what was happening. “Wait until
they have plenty of men on them, then slide them sideways. Then they’ll take
others down with them.”

Arrows flew over the battlements, targeting the soldiers who were trying to
dislodge the ladders, and Polites hurriedly donned his breastplate and helm when
they were brought to him. Khalkeus looked around him, wrenched a helmet from a
dead Trojan soldier, and hastily put it on. It smelled of blood and sweat.

A troop of Phrygian archers came running up the stone steps, prepared to
target the bowmen on the ground. But tall Kalliades, the general’s aide, stopped
them with a shout. “Don’t shoot! They are too far away for accuracy. Let them
keep shooting at us. We may need their arrows later.”

Kalliades glanced at Polites, who nodded his agreement. “Yes, we need their
arrows. And we need other missiles. They are an open target, all those enemy
soldiers milling down below us.”

Banokles strolled up to them, wiping blood off one of his swords on a piece
of cloth. “That was fun,” he commented.

He leaned over the battlements, then jumped back as an arrow glanced off his
helm. “Boiling oil, that’s what we need,” he said, echoing Polites’ words. “Or
water. That’ll give them something to think about.”

“There is little oil and no spare water in the city,” Polites answered. “We
cannot use the water we might need to drink come the end of summer.” The men
looked at each other, all no doubt thinking the same thing: Will we still be
here come summer’s end?

Khalkeus stepped forward. “Sand,” he said. The three men looked at him. “Sand
is what we need. Ordinary sand from the beach. Plenty of it. Is there any inside
the city?”

Polites frowned. “Sand is used in the royal gardens. There are piles of it
there. It is mixed with soil for plants which need drainage.” He saw Kalliades’
and Banokles’ expressions of surprise and smiled slightly. “As has been said
already today, I am not a military man. But I do know about plants.”

He turned to Khalkeus. “You can have all you want, smith, but what do you
want it for?”

At that moment a powerful Mykene warrior levered himself over the wall beside
them. As he cleared the battlements, Kalliades leaped toward him and skewered
his heart with a sword thrust. The man slumped across the wall, his sword
clattering to the stone floor. Kalliades and Banokles grabbed an arm each and
threw him back over. Khalkeus peered down and saw the warrior’s leg catch on the
ladder he had climbed and bring it down, along with four men climbing behind
him.

“They’re just wasting their men,” Banokles snorted. “We can go on doing this
all day. It makes no sense.”

“You’re right,” Polites replied, his face creased with worry. “It makes no
sense. Agamemnon is an intelligent man.” He looked to Kalliades, his face
suddenly clearing. “It is a diversion!”

Kalliades ran for the steps. “If they attack the east and west walls, they
will expect us to pull our troops away from the south!”

“The Scaean Gate!” Polites shouted, following him. To Banokles he yelled,
“Bring some men!”

Instead of pursuing them down the stone steps, Khalkeus trotted hurriedly
along the top of the western wall, then along the south wall as far as the Great
Tower of Ilion. Below him, behind the Scaean Gate, there was a furious battle
going on. The guards, defending the gate desperately against a group of
dark-garbed warriors, were being forced back. As he watched, the last of the
guards was brought down and the attackers sprang for the great oak locking bar.
It took six men to lift the bar, Khalkeus knew, but there were eight men, and
they had just laid their hands on it when Kalliades and Banokles arrived at a
run.

Banokles charged into them with a roar, half beheading one and slashing a
second across the face. The locking bar had cleared its support at one end.
There was a tremendous crash from outside, and the gate shifted inward slightly
under the blow. Kalliades leaped onto the end of the bar and threw his weight on
it, helped by soldiers who had arrived behind him. The huge oak bar locked back
into place just as a second blow hit it from the outside.

On the wall above them, Khalkeus hurried to the other side and looked down.
Outside the gate the massive trunk of an oak tree was being wielded as a
battering ram by fifty or more men. Behind them warriors waited, armed and
armored. The battering ram powered forward once again, but the great gate barely
shuddered. It was firmly locked.

As the bronzesmith watched, one of the waiting warriors turned his gaze up
toward him, and Khalkeus saw it was the king of Ithaka. Their eyes locked, and
Khalkeus slowly shook his head. Odysseus sheathed his sword, then turned and
walked away from the gate.

Odysseus tore off his helm angrily as he stomped through the streets of the
ruined lower town. Just as he had predicted, the Trojans had seen through the
ploy quickly. Agamemnon’s diversionary tactic had not been a bad idea, he
admitted to himself. If it had worked, it might have been worth sacrificing the
hundreds of men injured and killed in the attack on the walls. But it had
not
worked, and they had wasted brave soldiers and, more important, lost eight
agents inside the city. Those of the eight who survived would be interrogated,
but they knew nothing that would help the Trojans. The Ithakan king had no idea
how many agents Agamemnon had infiltrated into the city, but he was certain
there would be no more now. Hektor or whoever commanded in Troy certainly would
seal the last gates now to stop more refugees—and Mykene spies—from getting in.

Odysseus always had predicted that sooner or later there would be a bid by
the attackers to scale the great walls. He thought back to two nights
previously. He and some of his crew from the
Bloodhawk
were camped in the
courtyard of a palace once owned by Antiphones, now the home of Achilles’
Myrmidons. There had been no fighting that day, but fresh deliveries of wine had
arrived, and the mood was festive.

Achilles’ shield bearer Patroklos, standing with a goblet of wine in one hand
and a hunk of roasted sheep in the other, was arguing for an attempt on the
walls.

“Look at them,” Patroklos argued, swaying a little as he spoke, waving his
goblet toward the south walls. “A child could climb them. Plenty of handholds
between the stones.” He swigged wine and swallowed.

“We wait for a dark night; then the Myrmidons will be over the west wall
before the Trojans see us coming. Fight our way to the Scaean Gate, and the city
is ours. What do you say, Odysseus?”

“I say my climbing days are over, boy. And the west wall is a poor choice.
Because everyone knows it is the lowest, the weak link in the chain of walls, it
is more heavily defended than the others.”

“Which would be your choice, Odysseus?” asked Achilles, who was lying on his
back, staring at the stars.

“I would try the north wall.”

Patroklos snorted with derision. “A vertical cliff face with sheer walls
above? I wager no one could climb that.”

“I wager,” Odysseus replied, “that
you
couldn’t climb the west wall.”

Patroklos never could resist a wager, as the Ugly King knew well. He and
Odysseus and Achilles, followed by a happy wine-soaked band of Myrmidons and
Ithakans, left the palace and made their way around to the west wall. Framed by
the starlit sky, the walls soared high above them.