Fall of Kings (52 page)

Then someone cried out, “The Trojan Horse!”

Now Kalliades could see that the riders in front bore the black-and-white
crested helms of Hektor’s cavalry. They were lying low on their horses’ necks,
urging their mounts on with whipped reins and shouts. The chasing horsemen were
hampered by the dust being thrown up by their quarry and had fallen back some
way as both groups galloped up the slope from the plain toward the city.

As the front riders thundered across the wooden bridge into the lower town,
enemy soldiers started loosing arrows at them, and from all sides lances and
spears were thrown. Some appeared to hit their targets, and two horsemen on the
edge of the group went down. The soldiers watching from the walls were yelling
to urge their riders on.

Kalliades found his heart in his mouth as the leading horsemen galloped up
through the ruined town. Come on, he thought. Come on, you can make it! The
enemy riders seemed to have slowed further.

“Open the gates!” someone shouted, and the cry was picked up all along the
walls. “Open the gates quickly. Open the gates! Let them in!”

Then realization hit Kalliades like a blow to the face. His blood went cold.
“No!” he shouted. Pushing desperately through the ranks of cheering soldiers, he
raced along the wall to the battlements above the Scaean Gate. Below him men
were gathering eagerly to lift the massive locking bar and open the gates.

“No!” he bellowed down at them. “Stop! Don’t open the gates!” But his voice
could not be heard above the shouts of hundreds of men, and he ran down the
stone steps, waving his arms and yelling frantically.

“Don’t open the gates! By all the gods, don’t open the gates!”

But the massive oak doors already were groaning open, and with split-second
timing, the riders thundered through the gap. There were more than fifty of
them, garbed in the armor of the Trojan Horse and armed with spears. Their
horses’ hooves kicked up a storm of whirling dust as they slowed and circled
inside the gates. Behind them the guards started to close the gates again.

They were heaving the locking bar back into place when one of them fell with
a spear in his belly.

Kalliades drew his sword and ran for the nearest rider. He shouted, “Kill
them! They’re the enemy!” and lanced his blade into the man’s side, behind his
breastplate.

He saw a sword sweeping toward his head from another rider. He ducked under
the horse’s belly and leaped up to spear the man from the other side. As the
rider fell, Kalliades grabbed his shield.

He glimpsed Banokles beside him. His friend powered into the enemy horesemen,
slashing and killing. Kalliades shouted to him, “Defend the gates!” But both of
them were blocked from reaching the gates by the press of horses and riders.

Kalliades gutted one enemy warrior and parried a blow from a second,
backhanding his shield into the man’s face. He glanced desperately at the gates
again. Enemy warriors in the stolen armor of the Trojan Horse had their hands to
the locking bar and were attempting to lift it. Kalliades slashed and cut,
pushed and shoved his way toward them. He brained one of the men with his shield
and threw his weight onto the locking bar.

He realized that young Boros was at his side and yelled, “Help me here,
soldier!”

Boros grinned at him, then punched him hard on the jaw.

As Kalliades staggered back, Boros kicked him in the face. Kalliades went
flying, dazed, barely holding to consciousness. Bright lights were whirling
around his head. He lay stunned, watching in horror as more of the enemy
horsemen grabbed the great oak locking bar and heaved it off its brackets. The
high gates started to open slowly and then more quickly as they were pushed from
the outside.

And the enemy poured in.

Kalliades, lying shielded in the space behind one of the open doors, tried to
get to his feet, shaking his head to clear it. Then he realized that the
flaxen-haired soldier was standing looking down at him. As Kalliades tried to
rise, the young man placed the point of his sword at Kalliades’ throat, pushing
him back to the ground.

“Boros!” he whispered.

“Boros died long ago, at the battle for the Scamander,” the soldier replied
triumphantly. “I am Asios, first son of Alektruon, loyal servant of Agamemnon
King, and I am here to avenge my father and bring the proud Trojans to their
knees.”

He leaned forward, pressing on the sword at Kalliades’ throat. Blood started
to flow. Kalliades could not speak or move.

“It was so easy to take that idiot’s place when his entire company had been
wiped out and when the general of his regiment couldn’t even be bothered to
learn his soldiers’ names. And it amused me to fool the great Kalliades, the
thinker, the planner—the traitor to Mykene. Die, then, traitor!”

His face hardened, and he tensed to thrust his sword through Kalliades’ neck.
At that last moment Kalliades saw Banokles step up behind the boy, sword raised.
With one ferocious sweep of his blade he beheaded him. Hitting the gate, the
head bounced onto the ground.

Banokles put out his hand and dragged Kalliades to his feet. “He was
talkative,” he observed. “Always a mistake. Are you all right?” Kalliades
nodded, swallowing blood, still unable to speak.

“Come on, then,” Banokles said grimly. “We’ve got a city to die for.”

With enemy warriors hard on their heels, Kalliades and Banokles ran up the
stone steps to the west of the Scaean Gate. On the top of the wall Banokles
nodded to his comrade, then turned and raced away. He was heading for the next
steps down so that he could work his way around behind the new barricade.
Kalliades would stay and ensure that the wall was secure.

A Mykene warrior, heavily armored, appeared close behind him at the top of
the steps. Two Trojan soldiers were waiting, eager for a chance at the enemy.
One hacked at the warrior’s sword arm, and the other lunged for his throat. He
fell, blood gouting from his neck. He clattered down the stairway, knocking down
the man behind him.

Kalliades grinned at the two defenders. “Pace yourselves,” he ordered. “There
will be plenty more.”

Looking down from the wall, he surveyed the killing ground inside the gates.

The Trojan generals had been planning this day for a long time. If
Agamemnon’s forces won the freedom of Troy’s streets, the only sanctuary for the
city’s defenders would be the king’s palace. Because the best hope lay in
keeping the enemy confined at the gate for as long as possible, soldiers had
labored throughout the summer to demolish buildings high in the upper city,
taking them apart stone by stone. The stones had been used to fill in the roads
and alleyways all around the Scaean Gate, blocking them to twice the height of a
man.

Fire gullies had been dug all around the circle of open ground inside the
gate. They had been filled with anything that would burn: brushwood, the
branches and twigs of dead plants, and fuel left from Hektor’s funeral pyre.
Amphorae filled with the last oil in the city stood ready at points around the
killing ground.

As the blood-hungry invaders poured in through the gate, they found
themselves trapped in a space less than forty paces across, with the high walls
of stone buildings all around. There were just three ways available to them: up
the steps to the battlements on either side of the gate, up the steep stairs
inside the Great Tower of Ilion, and straight ahead.

Straight ahead was the only road left unblocked, the stone avenue that led to
the heights of the city and Priam’s palace. Polites had ordered the entrance to
the road barricaded on both sides, with only a central gap remaining for daily
traffic.

It was there that defenders were converging from all parts of the city.

Kalliades turned to the battlement door in the wall of the great tower. It
would be easy to hold. To get to it the enemy had to climb the steep tower steps
in darkness. When they reached the door, they would be emerging from dark into
light, through a narrow doorway above a high drop. One steady warrior could
defend the door all day, sending enemy after enemy falling to break his bones on
the stone floor far below.

There were a hundred men holding that part of the wall. Kalliades knew that
not one of them would fall or step back without a fight to the last.

After the long summer of waiting it was almost a relief that this day had
arrived. Kalliades looked around him and breathed deeply. The air seemed
fresher, the colors clearer. This is what you know, he told himself, the only
life you have ever known. If you are not a warrior, what are you, Kalliades?

An enemy warrior appeared at the tower door. A Scamandrian soldier leaped
forward and lunged at his chest. The Mykene had his shield up, but the force of
the blow unbalanced him. He fell back into darkness with a cry. Any invaders
braving the tower steps would have to pass a mounting pile of dead and injured
men, Kalliades thought with grim satisfaction. In time that would wear on their
resolve.

He surveyed the scene below. More and more invaders were pushing in through
the Scaean Gate, eager to get in on the action, and the killing ground was
packed with armed men. The Trojan defenders had fallen back, as planned, to the
narrowest section of the great road. There just thirty men, Eagles all, were
facing the main thrust of the enemy attack. Behind them the gap in the barricade
they were defending became narrower as soldiers labored to close it with stones,
timber, and rubble.

Kalliades watched with pride as the Eagles battled to hold back the enemy
horde. When ordered, one by one the warriors at each end of the line stepped
back and slipped through the gap. Finally just three Eagles remained. Kalliades
heard the order for them to retreat. Instead, as one, they charged! They were
cut down swiftly, but the gap behind them was plugged, and the barricade
secured.

Then an order was given. The brushwood was doused with oil, and flaming
torches were thrown in from the heights of the surrounding buildings. Within
heartbeats the fire had run along the length of the gullies, the oil-fueled
flames leaping high and setting alight anything close by. The enemy soldiers
nearest to the gullies tried desperately to get back from the flames, but more
warriors were pushing in through the gates behind them. The padded linen kilt of
a Kretan soldier caught fire, and within moments he was a screaming, writhing
human torch, blundering into his comrades and setting them ablaze. Other men
near the fire gullies were set on fire as the leaping flames were blown about by
gusty winds.

For a moment it looked as though the flames would jump from man to man,
dooming them all. But the disciplined Mykene warriors were not to be panicked.
Those armed with lances used them ruthlessly to kill the burning men or hold
them at bay until they dropped dying to the ground. Dozens of burned and
blackened soldiers lay moaning on the stones, but the fires had been stopped.

On top of the buildings all around the Scaean Gate and on the walls behind
the invaders, bowmen were gathering. Arrows started to pepper the enemy troops
from all sides, and Kalliades saw several go down, hit in neck, throat, or face.

Satisfied that the south battlements were well defended, Kalliades followed
Banokles’ footsteps and ran around the wall and down the steps to make his way
to the rear of the main barricade. There he found Polites conferring anxiously
with General Lucan and Ipheus, the commander of the Eagles.

“Your Eagles are fine warriors,” Kalliades told Ipheus. “Would that we had a
thousand of them.”

“Would that they followed orders,” Lucan growled. “Those three at the
barricade died needlessly. Three warriors might have made a difference come the
last days.”

“They were valiant men,” Ipheus said quietly.

“I’m not denying it,” the old general grunted. “But just as we have learned
to conserve food and water and weapons, so we must learn to conserve valor. We
have deep reserves of it, but it cannot be thrown away on suicidal adventures.”

Polites pointed out grimly, “We hoped the fires would spread and send the
enemy fleeing. What next? How long will this barricade hold?”

Kalliades replied, “They have hundreds of men ready to attack it, but on a
narrow front. There are thousands more outside the gate waiting to come in. If
they keep throwing warriors at it, which they will, eventually they will break
through. We can probably hold the barricade into the night, possibly through
tomorrow. I cannot see it lasting longer.”

He glanced at Lucan, who nodded his agreement. At that moment Banokles
arrived at a run. “We need more archers,” he demanded. “They’re packed like
cattle in there. Good bowmen can pick them off like ticks off a dog.”

Kalliades admitted, “We are short of bowmen.” Then he reluctantly added, “The
lady Andromache has been training the Women of the Horse to shoot. Some remain
in the city. They might—”

“No!” Polites cut across him with unaccustomed anger. “When the enemy breaks
through, those buildings will be cut off and the bowmen in them doomed. I will
not put the women in danger.”

Kalliades thought that any women still in the city were doomed, anyway, but
he responded, “Then I will call on the Thrakian leader Hillas. His archers are
the finest in Troy.”

In front of them a burly warrior in Kretan armor was the first to cross the
fire gully and clamber over the man-high barricade, killing a Trojan soldier
with a massive ax blow to the head. He was cut down immediately, but two more
Kretans followed close behind. One slipped and fell on the shifting timber and
stone of the new barricade and was lanced in the side by a Trojan warrior. The
other managed a wild sweep with his sword before he was stunned by a blow from a
shield and then half beheaded.