The Song of Troy Read online

  Odysseus had given me trained scouts to spy out our line of march; they reported that it was heavily forested, that few farms lay in our way, and that the season was too late for the shepherds to be at large. Furs and strong boots came out of storage, for Ida was already white with snow halfway down its flanks, and it was possible that we would encounter a blizzard. I estimated that we’d march about four leagues a day; twenty days ought to see us within sight of our goal. On the fifteenth of these twenty days old Phoinix my admiral was under orders to sail his fleet into the deserted harbour at Andramyttios, the nearest port on the coast. No fear that he would meet opposition. I had burned Andramyttios level with the ground earlier in the year – for the second time.

  We moved out silently and the days on the march passed without incident. No shepherds tarried in the snowy hills to fly to Lyrnessos bearing news of our coming. The tranquil landscape belonged to us alone, and our journey was easier than expected. Consequently we came within scouting distance of the city on the sixteenth day. I ordered a halt and forbade the lighting of fires until I could ascertain whether or not we had been detected.

  It was my habit to do this final investigation myself, so I set off on foot alone, ignoring the protests of Patrokles, who sometimes reminded me of a clucky old hen. Why is it that love breeds possessiveness and drastically waters down freedom?

  Not more than three leagues on I climbed a hill and saw Lynessos below me, sprawling over a fair area of land, with good strong walls and a high citadel. I studied it for some time, combining what I saw with what Odysseus’s agents had told me. No, it wouldn’t be an easy assault; on the other hand, it wouldn’t be half as difficult as Smyrna or Hypoplakian Thebes.

  Yielding to temptation, I descended the slope a little way, enjoying the fact that this was the lee side of the hill and quite free of snow, the ground still surprisingly warm. A mistake, Achilles! Even as I told myself this, I nearly stepped on him. He rolled aside lithely and pulled himself to his feet in a single supple movement, ran until he was out of spear-cast, then paused to survey me. I was vividly put in mind of Diomedes; this man had the same deadly, feline look about him, and from his clothing and his bearing I could tell that he was a high nobleman. Having listened to and memorised the catalogue of all the Trojan and Allied leaders which Odysseus had made for us and circulated through messengers, I decided that he was Aineas.

  ‘I am Aineas, and unarmed!’ he called.

  ‘Too bad, Dardanian! I am Achilles, and armed!’

  Unimpressed, he raised his brows. ‘There are definitely times in the life of a careful man when discretion is the better part of valour! I’ll meet you in Lyrnessos!’

  Knowing myself swifter of foot than others, I started after him at an easy pace, intending to wear him down. But he was very speedy, and he knew the lie of the land; I did not. So he led me into thorny thickets and left me floundering, over ground riddled with craters from foxes and rabbits, and finally to a wide river ford, where he streaked across on the hidden stones with light familiarity while I had to stop on each rock and look for the next. So I lost him, and stood cursing my own stupidity. Lyrnessos had a day’s warning of our impending attack.

  As soon as dawn came I marched, my mood sour. Thirty thousand men poured into the Vale of Lyrnessos, lapping about the city walls like syrup. A shower of darts and spears met them, but the men took the missiles on their shields as they had been taught, and sustained no casualties. It struck me that there was not much force behind the barrage, and I wondered if the Dardanians were a race of weaklings. Yet Aineas hadn’t looked like the leader of a degenerate people.

  The ladders went up. Leading the Myrmidons, I attained the little pathway atop the walls without having encountered one stone or pitcher of boiling oil. When a small band of defenders appeared I hacked them down with my axe, not needing to call for reinforcements. All along the line we were winning with truly ridiculous ease, and soon found out why. Our opponents were old men and little boys.

  Aineas, I discovered, had returned to the city on the previous day and immediately called his soldiers to arms. But not with the intention of fighting me. He decamped to Troy with his army.

  ‘It seems the Dardanians have an Odysseus in their midst,’ I said to Patrokles and Ajax. ‘What a fox! Priam will have an extra twenty thousand men led by an Odysseus. Let us hope the old man’s prejudices blind him to what Aineas is.’

  19

  NARRATED BY

  Brise

  Lyrnessos died, folding up its wings and spreading its plumage across the desolation with a shriek that was all the cries of the women put into one mouth. We had given Aineas into the care of his immortal mother, Aphrodite, glad he had been granted the opportunity to save our army. All the citizens had agreed it was the only thing to do, so that at least some part of Dardania would live on to strike a blow at the Greeks.

  Ancient suits of armour had been lifted from chests by gnarled hands which shook with the effort; boys donned their toy suits with white faces, toy suits never designed to take the bite of bronze blades. Of course they died. Venerable beards soaked up Dardanian blood, the war cries of small soldiers turned into the terrified sobbing of little boys. My father had even taken my dagger from me, tears in his eyes as he explained that he couldn’t leave me with the means to escape drudgery; it was needed, along with every other woman’s dagger.

  I stood at my window watching impotently as Lyrnessos died, praying to Artemis the merciful daughter of Leto that she would send one of her darts winging quickly to my heart, still its clamour before some Greek took me and sent me to the slave markets of Hattusas or Nineveh. Our pitiful defence was bludgeoned into the ground until only the citadel walls separated me from a seething mass of warriors all in bronze, taller and fairer than Dardanians; from that moment I envisioned the Daughters of Kore as tall and fair. The only consolation I had was that Aineas and the army were safe. So too was our dear old King, Anchises, who had been so beautiful as a young man that the Goddess Aphrodite had loved him enough to bear him Aineas. Who, good son that he is, refused to leave his father behind. Nor did he abandon Kreusa, his wife, and their little son, Askanios.

  Though I couldn’t tear myself away from the window, I could hear the sounds of preparation for battle in the rooms behind me – old feet pattering, reedy voices whispering urgently. My father was among them. Only the priests remained to pray at the altars, and even among them my uncle Chryses, the high priest of Apollo, elected to cast aside his holy mantle and don armour. He would fight, he said, to protect Asian Apollo, who was not the same God as Greek Apollo.

  They brought the rams to bear on the citadel gate. The palace shuddered deep in its bowels, and through the din beating on my ears I thought I heard the Earth Shaker bellow, a sound of mourning. For his heart was with them, not with us, Poseidon. We were to be offered up as victims for Troy’s pride and defiance. He could do no more than send us his sympathy, while he lent his strength to the Greek rams. The wood crumpled to splinters, the hinges sagged and the door gave way with a roar. Spears and swords at the ready, the Greeks poured into the courtyard, no pity in them for our pathetic opposition, only anger that Aineas had outwitted them.

  The man at their head was a giant in bronze armour trimmed with gold. Wielding a massive axe, he brushed the old men aside as if they were gnats, cleaving their flesh contemptuously. Then he plunged into the Great Hall, his men after him; I closed my eyes on the rest of the slaughter outside, praying now to chaste Artemis to put the idea into their heads to kill me. Far better death than rape and enslavement. Red mists swam before my lids, the light of day forced itself relentlessly in, my ears would not be deaf to choked cries and babbling pleas for mercy. Life is precious to the old. They understand how hard won it is. But I did not hear the voice of my father, and felt that he would have died as proudly as he had lived.

  When came the clank of heavy, deliberate feet I opened my eyes and swung round to face the doorway at the other end of the narrow
room. A man loomed there, dwarfing the aperture, his axe hanging by his side, his face under the gold-plumed bronze helm stained with grime. His mouth was so cruel that the Gods who made him had neglected to give him lips; I understood that a lipless man would not feel pity or kindness. For a moment he stared at me as if I had issued out of the earth, then he stepped into the room with his head tilted like a pricking dog’s. Drawing myself up, I resolved that he would hear no cry or whine from me, no matter what he did to me. He would not conclude from me that Dardanians lacked courage.

  The length of the room disappeared in what I fancied was one stride; he grabbed one of my wrists, then the other, and lifted me by my arms until I dangled with my toes just clear of the floor.

  ‘Butcher! Butcher of old men and little boys! Animal!’ I panted, kicking out at him.

  My wrists were suddenly crushed together so hard that the bones crunched. I longed to scream in agony, but I would not – I would not! His yellow eyes like a lion’s showed his rage; I had wounded him where his self-esteem was still sensitive. He didn’t like being called a butcher of old men and little boys.

  ‘Curb your tongue, girl! In the slave markets they flog defiance out of you with a barbed lash.’

  ‘Disfigurement would be a gift!’

  ‘But in your case, a pity,’ he said, putting me down and releasing my wrists. He transferred his grip to my hair and dragged me by it towards the door while I kicked and struck at his metal form until my feet and fists felt broken.

  ‘Let me walk!’ I cried. ‘Allow me the dignity of walking! I will not go to rape and slavery cringing and snivelling like a servant woman!’

  He stopped quite still, turned to stare down into my face with confusion on his own. ‘You have her courage,’ he said slowly. ‘You’re not like her, yet you have a look of her… Is that what you deem your fate, rape and slavery?’

  ‘What other fate is there for a captive woman?’

  Grinning – which did make him look more like other men because grinning thins the lips out – he let my hair go. I put my hand to my head, wondering if he had torn my scalp, then I walked ahead of him. His hand shot out, fingers fastening about my bruised wrist in a hold I had no hope of breaking.

  ‘Dignity notwithstanding, my girl, I am no fool. You’ll not escape from me through sheer carelessness.’

  ‘As your leader let Aineas escape on the hill?’ I gibed.

  His face didn’t change. ‘Exactly,’ he said impassively.

  He led me through rooms I hardly recognised, their walls spattered with blood, their furnishings already heaped for the plunder wagons. As we entered the Great Hall his feet spurned a pile of corpses, tossed one on top of the other without respect for their years or standing. I stopped, seeking anything in that anonymous collection which might let me identify my father. My captor halfheartedly tried to pull me away, but I resisted.

  ‘My father might be here! Let me see!’ I begged.

  ‘Which one is he?’ he asked indifferently.

  ‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t have to ask to look!’

  Though he wouldn’t help me, he let me tug him wherever I willed as I plucked at garments or shoes. At last I saw my father’s foot, unmistakable in its garnet-studded sandal – like most of the old men he had kept his armour, not his fighting boots. But I couldn’t free him. Too many bodies.

  ‘Ajax!’ my captor called. ‘Come and help the lady!’

  Weakened by the terror of the day, I waited as another giant strolled over, a bigger man than my captor.

  ‘Can’t you help her yourself?’ the newcomer asked.

  ‘And let her go? Ajax, Ajax! This one has spirit, I can’t trust her.’

  ‘Taken a fancy to her, little cousin? Well, it’s high time you took a fancy to someone other than Patrokles.’

  Ajax put me aside as if I had been a feather, then, still holding his axe, he tossed the bodies about until my father lay uncovered, until I could see his dead eyes staring up at me, his beard buried in a gash which almost severed him across the chest. It was an axe wound.

  ‘This is the ancient who faced me like a fighting cock,’ the one called Ajax said admiringly. ‘Fiery old fellow!’

  ‘Like father, like daughter,’ the one holding me said. He jerked at my arm. ‘Come, girl. I haven’t the time to indulge your grief.’

  I got up clumsily, tearing my hair into disorder as I saluted him, my father. Better by far to go knowing him dead than have to wonder if he had survived, hope the most foolish hope of all. Ajax moved away, saying he would muster any left alive, though he doubted there were.

  We halted at the doorway into the courtyard so my captor could strip a belt from a body lying on the steps. He fastened the leather tightly about my wrist, then secured its other end to his own arm, forcing me to walk closely beside him. Two steps higher up, I watched his bent head as he completed the small task with a thoroughness I fancied typical of him.

  ‘You didn’t kill my father,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ he answered. ‘I’m the leader your Aineas outwitted. That means I’m responsible for every death.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  ‘Achilles,’ he said shortly, tested his handiwork and hauled me after him into the courtyard. I had to run to keep up with him. Achilles. I should have known. Aineas had said it last, though I had been hearing it for years.

  We left Lyrnessos through its main gate, open as Greeks wandered in and out, looting and wenching, some with torches in their hands, some with wineskins. The man Achilles made no effort to reprimand them. He ignored them.

  At the top of the road I turned to look down into the Vale of Lyrnessos. ‘You have burned my home. There I dwelled for twenty years, there I expected to dwell until a marriage was arranged for me. But I never expected this.’

  He shrugged. ‘The fortunes of war, girl.’

  I pointed to the tiny figures of plundering soldiers. ‘Can’t you prevent their acting like beasts? Is there any need for it? I heard the women screaming – I saw!’

  His eyelids drooped cynically. ‘What do you know of exiled Greeks or their feelings? You hate us, and I understand that. But you don’t hate us as those men hate Troy and Troy’s allies! Priam has cost them ten years of exile. They delight in making him pay. Nor could I stop them if I tried. And frankly, girl, I don’t feel like trying to stop them.’

  ‘I’ve listened to the stories for years, but I didn’t know what war is,’ I whispered.

  ‘Now you do,’ he said.

  His camp was three leagues distant; when we reached it he found a baggage officer.

  ‘Polides, this is my own prize. Take the belt and harness her to an anvil until you can forge better chains. Don’t let her free for one moment, even if she pleads privacy to relieve herself. Once you have her chained, put her where she has everything she needs, including a chamber pot, good food and a good bed. Start for the ships at Andramyttios tomorrow and give her to the lord Phoinix. Tell him I don’t trust her, that she isn’t to be freed.’ He took my chin and pinched it lightly. ‘Goodbye, girl.’

  Polides found light chains for my ankles, padded the cuffs well, and took me to the coast on the back of an ass. There I was given to Phoinix, an upright old nobleman with the blue, crinkled gaze and rolling gait of a sailor. When he saw my fetters he clicked his tongue, though he made no attempt to remove them after he ensconced me on board the flagship. He bade me sit with gentle courtesy, but I insisted upon standing.

  ‘I’m so sorry for the chains,’ he said, grief in his eyes. But not grief for me, I understood. ‘Poor Achilles!’

  It annoyed me that the old man thought light of me. ‘This Achilles has a better idea of my mettle than you do, sir! Only let me within reach of a dagger and I’ll fight my way out of this living death, or die in the attempt!’

  His sadness vanished in a chuckle. ‘Ai, ai! What a fierce warrior you are! Don’t hope for it, girl. What Achilles binds fast, Phoinix won’t free.’

&n
bsp; ‘Is his word such sacred law?’

  ‘It is. He’s Prince of the Myrmidons.’

  ‘Prince of the ants? How appropriate.’

  For answer he chuckled again, pushed a chair forward. I looked at it with loathing, but my back ached from the donkey ride and my legs were trembling, for I had refused to eat or drink since my captivity. Phoinix pressed me into the chair with a hard hand and unstoppered a golden wine flagon.

  ‘Drink, girl. If you want to maintain your defiance, you’ll need sustenance. Don’t be silly.’

  Sensible advice. I took it, to find that my blood was thin and the wine went straight to my head. I could fight no longer. I propped my head on my hand and went to sleep in the chair, waking a long time later to find I had been put down on the bed. Shackled to a beam.

  The next day I was taken on deck, my chains fastened to the rail so I could stand in the weak, wintry sun and watch the busy comings and goings on the beach. But when four ships hove into view over the horizon, I noticed a huge scurry and flutter pass through the toiling men, particularly among their supervisors. Suddenly Phoinix was there releasing me from the rail, hustling me not to my previous prison but to a shelter on the afterdeck which stank of horses. He took me inside and locked me to a bar.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, curious.

  ‘Agamemnon, King of Kings,’ said Phoinix.

  ‘Why put me here? Aren’t I good enough to meet the King of Kings?’

  He sighed. ‘Have you no mirror in your Dardanian home, girl? One look at you and Agamemnon would have you in spite of Achilles.’

  ‘I could scream,’ I said thoughtfully.

  He stared at me as if I had gone mad. ‘If you did you’d regret it, I promise you! What good would changing masters do? Believe me, you’d end in preferring Achilles.’