Fall of Kings (51 page)

Then Agamemnon sheathed his blade and sat down on a carved chair. He sipped a
little water and smoothly changed the subject.

“The Trojans will be celebrating tonight,” he commented, as if the angry
exchanges had not happened. “They will have water enough now to last into the
autumn. We cannot wait while they die of thirst, so it is time to implement
Odysseus’ plan to take the city.” He gestured to the Ugly King. “Remain with us,
Ithaka, and by tomorrow night our soldiers could be inside the walls of Troy.
You have stayed the course this far. Do not go now, on the eve of our triumph.”
The words were bitter in his mouth, but the tension in the room eased and men
sheathed their swords, picking up their wine cups again.

“We will sail at dawn,” Odysseus said tiredly.

“Good riddance. More plunder for the rest of us,” Idomeneos repeated.

Odysseus turned on him. “That reminds me, Sharptooth. You still owe me your
breastplate, won by the warrior Banokles in a fistfight. I will collect it from
you before I leave.”

Idomeneos scowled. Smiling, Odysseus walked from the company of the kings for
the last time.

The horse was swimming. Skorpios knew the beasts could swim. Indeed, he had
seen many swimming for their lives in the Hellespont after the battle of Carpea.
But he had never sat astride a swimming horse. It was very peaceful. The sea was
blue, although above them the sky was as black as pitch, and the moon hung on
the horizon like a hole in the heavens. It was bigger than Skorpios had ever
seen it, and his mount was floating toward it along a path of silver moonlight.

Looking about curiously, he saw that there were fish all around him. They
were very big and were flashing past close to his legs. He wondered nervously if
fish had teeth. He was answered when one swam up to him and nibbled his knee. It
did not hurt, but it tickled him. He kicked out, and it darted away.

He noticed that Mestares was riding alongside him. His handsome face was
corpse gray, and one arm appeared to be missing.

“The sea is red,” said the warrior.

Skorpios was surprised to see that it
was
red.

“Go back, Skorpios. Go back while you can,” said Mestares, smiling at him
kindly.

Skorpios realized his leg was hurting now from the fish bite. And there was a
pain in his side. He had been riding for too long. He was very tired. He turned
his mount and headed away from the moon as Mestares had ordered, but it was dark
that way, and he felt very much alone.

When he awoke, he did not want to move. He was lying on the ground with his
back against something warm. He opened his eyes and saw his comrades sleeping
around him. He realized it was full daylight and, with a groan, sat up.

Then he remembered. They had come in the night, an army of Mykene soldiers,
hundreds of them. Caught by surprise, the Trojan horsemen had leaped quickly to
defend themselves, and the battle had been vicious. But there had been too many
of the enemy, and the Trojans had been unprepared. Skorpios had been gashed in
the knee by a lance but had managed to kill the wielder, slicing his sword into
the man’s inner thigh. He thought he had killed four or five of the enemy
soldiers before he turned to see the pommel of a sword crashing toward his head.

His head still ached because of the noise of horses screaming. There was a
pain in his side as well as in his knee, and one eye was gummy with blood.
Moaning, he rolled over and got to his knees, then vomited on the ground. He
looked around. It was still and silent in the woodland glade. Everywhere there
were dead men and horses. He had been lying with his back to a bay stallion. It
seemed to be sleeping peacefully. He could not see a wound. He thought it was
Mestares’ mount, Warlord. Then he recalled his dream. He saw Mestares’ body
lying close by, a broken sword through his belly, his open eyes full of dust.

Skorpios stood, clutching his side. He pulled aside his bloody shirt to look
at the wound. A sword had gone cleanly through the flesh, and he could see the
neat shape of the blade on his white skin. It was bleeding, but not much. He
could not remember being wounded in the side. He checked his leg. It was a nasty
gash and had bled heavily. But most of the blood on him seemed to have come from
his head. He felt a clot of blood above his right ear. He tried to remember what
his friend Olganos once had told him about bandaging wounds. Some had to be
bandaged heavily, some left free to drain. He could not remember which was
which.

His throat was parched, and he started looking for a water skin. It was only
then that he realized that all the Trojan bodies, including his own, had been
stripped of armor. They thought me dead, he said to himself.

He frowned. Looking around, he started to count the bodies of his comrades.
There were not enough. Some got away, he thought, and his heart lifted.

Staggering around among the corpses of friends and foes, at last he found his
own belongings, including a half-full water skin. He threw his head back and
drank deeply. The taste was like nectar, and he felt strength flooding back into
his body. The pain in his head receded a little.

Skorpios found bandages and wound one around his leg, sloshing some water
onto the wound first. He looked at his side again and decided it would be
impossible to bandage. He delved into other men’s bags until he had gathered
some food. He found a full water skin. His best find was an unbroken sword
hidden under the body of a Mykene soldier. He thrust it into the scabbard still
hanging from his waist and instantly felt stronger. He picked up a bronze knife.
It was blunt, but he took it anyway.

Then, with a last look at his dead comrades, he set out for the north,
limping on his injured knee.

He had been traveling for some time, and his strength was failing, when he
saw a stray horse cropping dry grass under a tree. It was trailing its reins and
still had a lion-skin shabrack over its back. He whistled to it, and, well
trained, it trotted over to him. From the decorative plaiting of the reins
Skorpios thought it was a Mykene mount.

With effort he climbed onto its back, then turned again in the direction of
Troy. He would meet the enemy soon, and when he did, he would kill as many of
them as he could before he died.

He felt no fear.

“Great Zeus, I’m hungry!” Banokles complained. “My belly thinks my throat’s
been sliced.”

“You’ve said that every day since we got here,” Kalliades pointed out.

“Well, it’s been true every day since we got here.”

They stood on the south wall of Troy, gazing down on the enemy armies. The
ashes from Hektor’s funeral pyre still were floating by on the breeze. The
massive pyre had burned all night, fueled by wood brought by Trojans from all
parts of the city. Kalliades had seen young men carrying costly furniture to
chop up for firewood and old men bearing armfuls of twigs from dead plants.
Everyone wanted to play his part, however small, in the death rites for their
hero.

Scented branches of cedar and fragrant herbs had been placed on top of the
pyre, followed by Hektor’s body in a richly embroidered robe of gold, his dead
hands clasped around his sword hilt, a gold ring in his mouth for the ferryman.

As the huge pyre blazed, Kalliades saw King Priam being helped out onto the
balcony of the palace to watch. He was too far away to see the old man’s face,
but Kalliades felt a stab of pity for him. Hektor had been the king’s favorite
son, and, Kalliades believed, Priam loved him as much as he was capable of
loving anyone. Now all his sons were dead except Polites. Priam had the boy
Astyanax close by his side on the balcony. The child had cried out in excitement
and clapped his hands as the crackling flames had climbed high into the night
sky.

After the funeral rites, back on the walls the familiar lethargy had
returned. The duel and the death of Hektor had angered the men, and the coming
of rain had refreshed them. For two days they had walked with pride. Like
Hektor, they were warriors of Troy and would fight to the last for the city. But
quickly the lack of food and the long uneventful days had taken their toll, and
they had lapsed into idleness and boredom again.

Kalliades was watching a dust cloud in the far distance. The dry earth had
sucked all the rain into it, and the ground was as dusty now as it had been
before the storm.

Boros the Rhodian was standing alongside Kalliades and Banokles. “Can you see
what that is?” Kalliades asked the flaxen-haired lad. “Your eyes are younger
than mine.”

“I’m not sure, sir,” the soldier admitted. “Is it a cow?”

Banokles looked at him in amazement. “Is what a cow, you moron?” he asked.

“Over there.” The young soldier was pointing toward the tomb of Ilos, where a
stray bullock, destined for sacrifice, was chewing grass.

“I meant in the distance beyond the Scamander,” Kalliades said. “There is a
cloud of dust, probably riders, maybe a battle.”

The soldier squinted his eyes and confessed, “I don’t know.”

Banokles suggested, “Perhaps it’s a herd of pigs being driven to Troy for
roasting.” He frowned. “They’d have to be invisible pigs to get past the enemy.
But,” he argued with himself, “we cannot open the gates, so how will they get
in? Then they must be invisible poxy pigs with poxy wings, ready to fly over the
walls straight onto spits.”

Kalliades smiled. Boros, apparently encouraged by his ramblings, said to
Banokles, “General, I have a request.”

“What?” Banokles grunted without interest.

“When we have won this war, I would like to return to my family in Rhodos.”

“Why tell me? I don’t care what you do.” Banokles scowled at him.

Boros regarded the general uncertainly as he would an unknown and possibly
dangerous dog, then said, “But I have no rings, sir. I have been with the
Scamandrians more than a year, but I have only been paid once, at the Feast of
Persephone, when I received three silvers and six coppers. That is all gone now,
and my brother’s rings were plundered from his body. I cannot return to Rhodos
unless we are paid.”

Banokles shook his head. “I don’t know why you’re worrying about getting
home. We’ll probably all die here, anyway,” he said. “Of hunger,” he added
gloomily.

Kalliades grinned and clapped his friend on the back. “What have I told you
about motivating the men,
General
?” he asked.

Banokles grunted. “Well, there’s no point worrying about poxy rings when
we’ve got these goat-shagging lumps of cow turd to deal with first.” He waved at
the enemy camps below them.

Banokles was right. Besides, Kalliades knew there was nothing left in Priam’s
treasury for the regular troops. The mercenaries from Phrygia, Zeleia, and the
Hittite borders had been paid. Trojan troops, he thought, are expected to die
for Troy without pay.

“If we live, I will see you get rings enough,” he promised Boros, knowing his
promise was probably meaningless.

“More of the enemy have left,” the lad commented. “That is a good sign, isn’t
it?” he asked hopefully.

“It is not a bad sign” was all Kalliades could say. They had watched as the
Myrmidons had marched out along with two other armies, but he could not tell
whose. He wondered at the political infighting between the western kings that
had brought this about. Achilles had been poisoned, but by whom? It certainly
had not been Hektor. Even the enemy did not believe that. His body had been
returned to the city with honor by the soldiers of Thessaly. Had Achilles been
murdered by someone on his own side? It was a mystery Kalliades knew he was
unlikely ever to solve.

“What will you do if you return to Rhodos?” he asked Boros.

“I will join my father, who is a goldsmith. He will train me in his craft.”

Kalliades raised his eyebrows. “Great Zeus, lad, if my father were a
goldsmith, I would have stayed at home and learned his trade and not sold my
skills with a sword.”

“My mother is a Trojan woman, and she told me I must fight for the honor of
our city. And she wanted me to find out if Echios was still alive. He was her
firstborn, you see. She had not seen him for fifteen years.”

Banokles narrowed his eyes against the sunlight and commented, “Horsemen.”

The far dust cloud had resolved itself into two dust clouds, and both were
heading for Troy. They were moving fast, as if one group of horsemen were
chasing the other. Kalliades leaned forward on the battlement wall, frustrated
by his inability to see more clearly at that distance. He glanced at Boros and
saw that the young man was peering in the wrong direction. Kalliades moved as if
to hit the lad on the left side of his face, pulling his punch at the last
moment. Boros did not even flinch.

“Boros,” he said. Boros turned his head, then jumped when he saw Kalliades’
fist close to his face.

“Can you see anything out of your left eye?”

The lad shook his head. “No. I used to be able to see light and shadow, but
that has gone now. Everything is dark. I was injured in Thraki, you see.”

Kalliades knew that a one-eyed soldier could not last long in a pitched
battle. It was remarkable the lad was still alive.

He turned his attention back to the horsemen in the distance. There were two
groups of riders. In front were about fifty men being chased at a furious pace
by maybe two hundred. They had crossed the Scamander and were racing across the
plain toward the city. The men on the walls shouted to their comrades to come
and watch the race, and below them enemy soldiers were being ordered from tents
and from the shadows of ruined houses. They were arming themselves quickly,
putting on sword belts and helms, collecting lances and spears, bows and quivers
of arrows.