Chapter 3
We were given a bowl of thin barley gruel and then set to work with wooden shovels on the earthworks defending the beach.
While the warriors ate a leisurely breakfast of mutton and flat bread, and their men-at-arms yoked horses to chariots and sharpened swords and spears, we lumbered out through one of the makeshift gates in the low rampart that had been heaped up along the beach. Our task this fine, windy morning was to deepen the trench in front of the mound and pile the diggings atop it. This would make it even harder for Trojan troops or chariots to reach the ships.
We worked a good part of the morning. The sky was a sparkling bowl of wondrously clear, cloudless blue, dotted by screeching white gulls soaring above us. The sea was an even deeper blue, restless with flecks of white-foamed waves. Grayish brown humps of islands rose above the distant horizon. In the other direction, Troy's towers and beetling walls seemed to glower down at us from across the plain. Beyond it the distant hills were dark with trees and beyond them rose the hazy mountains.
The wind strengthened into a brisk gusting breeze as the sun rose higher, helping to keep us cool as we dug and emptied our shovels of sandy soil into woven baskets that were carried to the top of the mound by other thetes. As I dug and sweated, I thought about my memories of the night. It was no dream, I was certain of that. The Golden One really existed, whether he called himself Apollo or some other name from an earlier existence. I dimly remembered knowing him from another time, another era—him, and a dark, brooding hulking presence. The one he called Ahriman, I thought. And the goddess, the woman I loved. The woman who was dead. The Golden One said I was responsible for her death. Yet I knew that he had set in motion the train of events that ended with our starship exploding. He had killed her, killed us both. Yet somehow he had revived me, placed me here in this time and place, alone and bereft of memory.
But I did remember. A little, anyway. Enough to know I hated the Golden One for what he had done to me. And to her. I tightened my callused hands on the shovel, anger and the hollow empty feeling of heartsickness driving me. None of the other thetes were pushing themselves and the work went slowly, mainly because the whipmaster and the other overseers ignored us, spending their time at the top of the mound where they could ogle the camp and the noblemen in their splendid bronze armor.
Achaians, they called themselves. I heard it from the men laboring around me. It would be another thousand years before they began to think of themselves as Greeks. They were here besieging Troy, yet they seemed worried that the Trojans would break through these defenses and attack the camp. There is trouble among the Achaians, I thought.
And the Golden One said that the Trojans were going to beat off their besiegers.
Poletes had been picked to carry baskets of dirt from down where we were digging up to the top of the rampart. At first I thought this was too much of a burden for his skinny old legs, but the baskets were small and carried only a light load, and the overseers were lax enough to let the load-carriers meander up the slope slowly.
The old man spotted me among the diggers and came to me.
"All is not well among the high and mighty this morning," he whispered to me, delighted. "There's some argument between my lord Agamemnon and Achilles, the great slayer of men. They say that Achilles will not leave his tent today."
"Not even to help us dig?" I joked.
Poletes cackled with laughter. "The High King Agamemnon has sent a delegation to Achilles to beseech him to join the battle. I don't think it's going to work. Achilles is young and arrogant. He thinks his shit smells like roses."
I laughed back at the old man.
"You there!" The whipmaster pointed at us from the top of the mound. "If you don't get back to work I'll give you something to laugh about!"
Poletes hoisted his half-filled basket up to his frail shoulders and started climbing the slope. I turned back to my shovel.
The sun was high in the cloudless sky when the wooden gate nearest me creaked open and the chariots started streaming out, the horses' hooves thudding on the packed-earth ramp that cut across the trench. All work stopped. The overseers shouted for us to come up out of the trench and we scrambled eagerly up the slope of the rampart, happy to watch the impending battle.
Bronze armor glittered in the sun as the chariots arrayed themselves in line abreast. Most were pulled by two horses, though a few had teams of four. The horses neighed and stamped their hooves nervously, as if they sensed the mayhem that was in store. There were seventy-nine chariots, by my count. Quite a bit short of the thousands that the poets sang about.
Each chariot bore two men, one handling the horses, the other armed with several spears of different weights and length. The longest were more than twice the height of a warrior, even in his bronze helmet with its horse-hair plume.
Both men in each chariot wore bronze breastplates, helmets, and arm guards. I could not see their legs but I guessed that they were sheathed in greaves, as well. Most charioteers carried small round targes strapped to their left forearms. Each warrior held a figure-eight shield that was nearly as tall as he was, covering him from chin to ankles. Every man bore a sword on a baldric that looped over his shoulder. I caught the glitter of gold and silver on the handles of the swords. Many of the charioteers had bows slung across their backs or hooked against the chariot rail.
A shout went up as the last chariot passed through the gate and along the trodden-smooth rampway that crossed our trench. The four horses pulling it were magnificent matched blacks, glossy and sleek. The warrior in it seemed stockier than most of the others, his armor filigreed with gold inlays.
"That's the High King," said Poletes, over the roar of the shouting men. "That's Agamemnon."
"Is Achilles with them?" I asked.
"No. But that giant there is Great Ajax," he pointed, excited despite himself. "There's Odysseus, and . . ."
An echoing roar reached us from the battlements of Troy. A cloud of dust showed us that a contingent of chariots was filing out of a gate to the right side of the city, winding its way down an incline that led to the plain before us.
Ground troops were hurrying out of our gates now, men-at-arms bearing bows, slings, axes, cudgels. A few of them wore armor or chain mail, but most of them had nothing more protective than leather jerkins, some studded with bronze pieces.
The two armies assembled themselves facing each other on the windswept plain. A fair-sized river formed a natural boundary to the battlefield on our right, while a smaller stream defined the left flank. Beyond their banks on both sides the sandy ground was green with tussocks of long-bladed grass, but the battlefield had been worn bare by chariot wheels and the tramping feet of soldiery.
For nearly a half hour, nothing much happened. Heralds went out and spoke with each other while the dust drifted away on the wind.
"None of the heroes are challenging each other to single combat today," explained Poletes. "The heralds are exchanging offers of peace, which each side will disdainfully refuse."
"They do this every day?"
"So I'm told. Unless it rains."
"Did the war really start over Helen?" I asked.
Poletes shrugged elaborately. "That's the excuse. And it's true that Prince Aleksandros abducted her from Sparta while her husband's back was turned. Whether she came along with him willingly or not, only the gods know."
"Aleksandros? I thought his name was Paris."
"He is sometimes called Paris. But his name is Aleksandros. One of Priam's sons." Poletes laughed. "I hear that he and Menalaos, the lawful husband of Helen, fought in single combat a few days ago and Aleksandros ran away. He hid behind his foot soldiers! Can you believe that?"
I nodded.
"Menalaos is Agamemnon's brother," Poletes went on, his voice dropping lower, as if he did not want others to overhear.
"The High King would love to smash Troy flat. That would give him clear sailing through the Hellespont into the Sea of Black Waters."
"Is that important?"
"Gold, my boy," Poletes whispered. "Not merely the metal that kings adorn themselves with, but golden grain grows by the far shores of that sea. A land awash in grain. And no one can pass through the straits to get at it unless they pay a tribute to Troy."
"Ahhh." I was beginning to see the real forces behind this war.
"Aleksandros was on a mission of peace to Mycenae, to arrange a new trade agreement between his father Priam and High King Agamemnon. He stopped off at Sparta and wound up abducting Helen instead. That was all the excuse Agamemnon needed. If he can conquer Troy he can have free access to the riches of the regions beyond the straits."
I was about to ask why the Trojans would not simply return Helen to her rightful husband, when a series of bugle blasts ended the quiet on the plain below us.
"Now it begins," Poletes said, grimly. "The fools rush to the slaughter once again."
We watched as the charioteers cracked their whips and the horses bolted forward, carrying Achaians and Trojans madly toward each other.
I focused my vision on the chariot nearest us and saw the warrior in it setting his sandaled feet in a pair of raised sockets, to give him a firm base for using his spears. He held his body-length shield before him and plucked one of the lighter, shorter spears from the handful rattling in their holder on his right.
"Diomedes," said Poletes, before I asked. "The prince of Argos. A fine young man."
The chariot approaching his swerved suddenly and the warrior in it hurled a spear. It sailed past harmlessly.
Diomedes threw his spear and hit the rump of the farthest of his opponent's four horses. The horse whickered and reared, throwing the other three so off stride that the chariot skewed wildly, tumbling the warrior onto the dusty ground. The charioteer either fell or ducked behind the chariot's siding.
Other combats were turning the worn-bare field into a vast cloud of dust, chariots wheeling, spears hurtling through the air, shrill battle cries and shouted curses ringing everywhere. The foot soldiers seemed to be holding back, letting the noblemen fight their single encounters for the first few moments of the battle.
One voice pierced all the other noises, a weird screaming cry like a seagull gone mad.
"The battle cry of Odysseus," Poletes said. "You can always hear the King of Ithaca above all others."
But I was still concentrating on Diomedes. His charioteer reined in his team and the warrior hopped down to the ground, two spears gripped in his left hand, his massive figure-eight shield bumping against his helmet and greaves.
"Ah, a lesser man would have speared his foe from the chariot," Poletes said admiringly. "Diomedes is a true nobleman. Would that he had been in Argos when Clytemnestra's men put me out!"
Diomedes approached the fallen warrior, who clambered back to his feet and held his shield before him, drawing his long sword from its scabbard. The prince of Argos took his longest and heaviest spear in his right hand and shook it menacingly. I could not hear what the two men were saying to each other, but they shouted something back and forth.
Suddenly both men dropped their weapons, rushed to each other, and embraced like a couple of long-lost brothers. I was stunned.
"They must have relatives in common," Poletes explained. "Or one of them might have been a guest in the other's household sometime in the past."
"But the battle . . ."
He shook his gray head. "What has that to do with it? There are plenty of others to kill."
The two warriors exchanged swords, then they both got back onto their chariots and drove in opposite directions.
"No wonder this war has lasted ten years," I muttered.
But although Diomedes and his first encounter of the day ended nonviolently, that was the only bit of peace I saw amid the carnage of the battle. Chariots hurtled at each other, spearmen driving their fourteen-foot weapons into their enemies like medieval knights would use their lances nearly two thousand years later. The bronze spear points were themselves the length of a man's arm. When all the energy generated by a team of four galloping horses was focused on the gleaming tip of that sharp spear point, it was if a high-velocity cannon shell tore into its target. Armored men were lifted off their feet, out of their chariots, when those spears found them. Bronze armor was no protection against that tremendous force.
The warriors preferred to fight from the chariots, I saw, although here and there men had alighted and faced their opponents afoot. Still the infantry soldiers hung back, skulking and squinting in the swirling clouds of dust, while the noblemen faced each other singly. Were they waiting for a signal? Was there some tactic in this bewildering melee of individual combats? Or was it that the foot soldiers knew that they could never face an armored nobleman and those deadly spears?
Here two chariots clashed together, the spearman of one driving his point through the head of the other's charioteer. There a pair of armored noblemen faced each other on foot, dueling and parrying with their long spears. One of them whirled suddenly and rammed the butt of his spear into the side of his opponent's helmet. The man dropped to the ground and his enemy drove his spear through his unprotected neck. Blood gushed onto the thirsty ground.
Instead of getting back into his chariot, or stalking another enemy, the victorious warrior dropped to his knees and began unbuckling the slain man's armor.
"A rich prize," Poletes explained. "The sword alone should buy food and wine for a month, at least."
Now the foot soldiers came forward, on both sides, some to help strip the carcass, others to defend it. A comical tug-of-war started briefly, but quickly turned into a serious fight with knives, axes, cudgels, and hatchets. The armored nobleman made all the difference, though. He cut through the enemy foot soldiers with his long sword, hacking limbs and lives until the few who could ran for their lives. Then his men resumed stripping the corpse while the warrior stood guard over them, as effectively out of the battle for the time being as if he himself had been killed.
Most of the chariots were overturned or empty of their warriors by now. Men were fighting on foot with long spears or swords. I saw armored noblemen pick up stones and throw them, to good effect. Archers—many of them charioteers who fired from the protection of their cars' leather-covered side paneling—began picking off unprotected infantry. I saw an armored warrior suddenly drop his spear and paw, howling, at an arrow sticking in his beefy shoulder. A chariot raced by and the warrior in it spitted an archer on his spear, lifting him completely out of his chariot and dragging him in the dust until his dead body wrenched free of the spear's barbed point.
All this took only a few minutes. There seemed to be no order to the battle, no plan, no tactics. The noble contestants seemed more interested in looting the bodies of the slain than defeating the enemy forces. It was more like a game than a war. A game that soaked the ground with blood and filled the air with screams of pain and terror.
The one thing that stood out above all others was that to turn and attempt to flee was much more dangerous than facing the enemy and fighting. I saw a charioteer wheel his team about to get away from two chariots converging on him. Someone threw a spear that caught him between the shoulder blades. His team ran wild, and while the warrior in the chariot attempted to take the reins from the dead hands of his companion and get the horses under control, another spearman drove up and killed him with a thrust in the back.
Foot soldiers who turned away from the fighting took arrows in the back or were cut down by chariot-mounted warriors who swung their swords like scythes.
It was getting difficult to see, the dust was swirling so thickly. But I heard a fresh trumpet blast and the roar of many men shouting in unison. Then the thunder of horses' hooves shook the ground.
Through the dust came three dozen chariots, heading straight toward the place where we stood atop the earthworks rampart.
"Prince Hector!" said Poletes, with awe in his voice. "Look how he slices through the Achaians."
Hector had either regrouped his main chariot force or had held them back from the opening melee of the battle. Whichever, he was now driving them like shock troops through the Achaian forces, slaughtering left and right. Hector's massive long spear was stained with blood halfway up its fourteen-foot length. He carried it as lightly as a wand, spitting armored noblemen and leather-jerkined foot soldiers alike, driving relentlessly toward the rampart that protected the beach, the camp, and the ships.
For a few minutes the Achaians fought back, but when Hector's chariot broke past the ragged line of Greek chariots and headed for the gate in the rampart, the Achaian resistance crumbled. Noblemen and foot soldiers alike, chariots and infantry, they all ran screaming for the safety of the earthworks.
Hector and his Trojan chariots wreaked bloody havoc among the panicked Achaians. With spears and swords and arrows they killed and killed and killed. Men ran hobbling, limping, bleeding toward us. Screams and groans filled the air.
An Achaian chariot rushed bumping and rattling to the gate, riding past and even over the fleeing footmen. I recognized the splendid armor of the squat, broad-shouldered warrior in it: Agamemnon the High King.
He did not look so splendid now. His plumed helmet was gone. His armor was coated with dust. An arrow protruded from his right shoulder and blood streaked the arm.
"We're doomed!" he shrieked in a high girlish voice. "Doomed!"