The Song of Troy (48 page)

Shortly afterwards I banished Automedon and the chariot to the back of the field, giving Old Pelion into his care. This was axe work. Ah, what a weapon in a crush! The Myrmidons kept with me and we were unbeatable. But no matter how frantic the action, I never ceased to look for Hektor. Whom I found just after I killed a man wearing the insignia of a son of Priam’s. Not far away, face twisted by the fate of his brother, Hektor watched. Our eyes met; the field seemed not to exist. I read satisfaction in his sombre contemplation as we saw each other’s faces for the first time. We drew closer and closer, striking down our foes with one thought in mind: to meet, to be near enough to touch. Then came another surge. Something crushed my side and I almost lost my footing as I was hurled back through the ranks. Men fell and were mashed to pulp, but I wept because Hektor was lost to me. From grief I passed to anger and a killing frenzy.

The red furore lifted when there were no more than a handful of purple plumes opposing me and the torn, trampled grass was visible between their feet. The Trojans had disappeared; I dealt with stragglers. They backed off in an orderly withdrawal, their leaders mounted once more in their cars, and Agamemnon let them go, content for the moment to re-form his own lines. My chariot appeared from nowhere, and I climbed up beside Automedon.

‘Find Agamemnon,’ I panted, letting my shield drop to the floor struts with a sigh of relief. A wonderful protection, but almost too heavy.

All the leaders had come in. I pulled up between Diomedes and Idomeneus. Tasting victory, Agamemnon was the King of Kings again. A piece of linen was bound about a cut in his forearm and dripped slow crimson to the earth, but he seemed not to notice.

‘They’re in full retreat,’ Odysseus was saying. ‘However, there’s no sign that they intend to take refuge inside the city – not yet, at any rate. Hektor thinks there’s still a chance to win. We needn’t hurry.’ He glanced up at Agamemnon with the look that said he had just had a bright idea. ‘Sire, what if we do what we did for nine years? What if we split our army into two and try to drive a wedge through the middle of their ranks? About a third of a league from here Skamander takes a big loop inwards to the city walls. Hektor’s already heading that way. If we can manoeuvre them so that they’re stretched out across the neck of the loop, we could use the Second Army to push half of them at least into the maw of the loop, while the rest of us continue to drive their other half in the direction of Troy. We won’t accomplish much with those running for Troy, but we can slaughter those shut up in the arms of Skamander.’

It was a very good plan, and Agamemnon was not slow to realise that. ‘Agreed. Achilles and Ajax, take whatever units you prefer from Second Army days and deal with whatever Trojans you can trap inside the Skamander loop.’

I looked very slightly mutinous. ‘Only if you make sure that Hektor doesn’t escape into the city.’

‘Agreed,’ said Agamemnon at once.

They fell into the trap like little fishes into a net. We drew up with the Trojans as they came level with the neck of the loop in the river, whereupon Agamemnon charged his infantry straight through their middle ranks, scattering them. They had no hope of continuing an orderly retreat while coping with the huge mass of men he deployed. On the left Ajax and I held our forces back until a good half of the fleeing Trojans realised they had run into a blind end, then we swung across their only avenue of escape. I massed my infantry and led them into the loop, Ajax bellowing off to the right as he did the same. The Trojans panicked, milled about helplessly, fell ever backwards until their hind ranks stood on the brink of the river. The weight of men still retreating before us pushed them inexorably on; like sheep on the edge of a cliff, those in the rear began to tumble into the foul water.

The old God Skamander did half our work for us; while Ajax and I hacked them to shrill pleas for mercy, he drowned them in hundreds. From my chariot I saw the waters running clearer and more strongly than usual; Skamander was in full spate. Those who lost their footing on the bank had no hope of regaining their feet to fight the current, handicapped as they were by armour and panic. But
why
was Skamander in full spate? There had been no rain. Then I found the time to look towards Mount Ida; the sky above it was roiling with thunderheads, and there were opaque curtains of rain lying like cleavers across the foothills beyond Troy, chopping them off.

I gave Old Pelion to Automedon and got down with my axe in my hands, the shield a weight I couldn’t bear to carry. I would have to do without one, and there was no Patrokles to follow me. But before I waded into the fray I remembered to call up one of the baggage noncombatants; I owed Patrokles twelve noble Trojan youths for his tomb. Easily gathered in such a debacle. That awful, mindless lust for other men’s blood swept over me again, and I could not find enough Trojans to satiate it. At the river bank I didn’t pause, waded out instead after the few terrified men I had cornered. The weight of my iron armour anchored me in the increasing thrust of the current; I slew until Skamander ran ever redder.

One Trojan tried to make a duel of it. He called himself Asteropaios; a high nobleman of Troy at least, for he wore gilded bronze. His was very much the advantage, as he stood on the bank while I was waist deep in the river, with nothing save my axe against his handful of spears. But never think Achilles witless! As he readied himself to cast his first missile I took my axe by the end of its handle and flung it at him like a throwing dagger. He loosed his spear, but the sight of that thing whopping through the air spoiled his aim. Over and over the axe turned, flashing in the sun. Then it took him full in the chest, its jaws deep in his flesh. He lived no more than an instant, then pitched forward and dropped like a stone into the water, face down.

Intending to prise the axe free, I waded to him and turned him over. But the head was rooted in him to its handle, the shattered metal of his cuirass tangled around it. So intent was I that I hardly noticed the dull roaring in my ears, or felt the water bucking like a newly broken stallion. Very suddenly the water was up to my armpits and Asteropaios was bobbing as lightly as a sliver of bark. I grasped his arm and forced him close to me in a mock embrace, using my own body to steady him as I worked at the axe. The roar was now a huge thunder, and I had to fight to keep my footing. At last the axe came free; I snaked its thong fast about my wrist, afraid of losing it. The River God was shouting his anger to me; it seemed he preferred that his own people defile him with their wastes than I defile him with their blood.

A wall of water bore down on me like a landslide. Even Ajax or Herakles could not have withstood it. Ah, there! An overhanging branch on an elm tree! I leaped for it. My fingers found leaves and struggled those few enormous handspans higher until I had solid wood in my grasp; the branch bent over with me as I fell back into the torrent.

For an instant the wall hovered over me like some watery arm grown by the God, then he flung it down on my head with all the fury he could muster. I sucked in a last great breath of air before the world turned liquid, before I was pushed and pulled in a hundred directions at once by a strength far superior to my own. My chest was almost to bursting, both my hands clung of themselves to the elm branch; I thought in agony of the sun and the sky, and wept within my heart at the bitter irony of being defeated by a river. I had used too much of myself grieving for Patrokles and killing Trojans, and that iron armour was a death.

I prayed to the dryad who lived in the elm tree, but the water rolled over my head unabated; then the dryad or some other sprite heard me, and my head broke the surface. I gulped air gluttonously, shook Skamander from my eyes and looked about me desperately. The bank which had been almost close enough to touch was gone. I seized fresh hold of the elm, but the dryad deserted me. The last of the bank came away and left the old tree’s mighty roots bare. My own body in all that iron formed the extra load; the mass of leaves and branches tilted over, and the elm took the plunge into the river with scarcely a sound of anguish above the howling of the flood.

I kept hold of the branch, wondering if Skamander would be strong enough to sweep everything downstream. But the elm remained with its head in the water, a dam which held back the debris moving towards our camp and the Myrmidon stockade. Bodies piled up against its bulk like brown blossoms with crimson throats, purple plumes wreathed around the green of its trees, hands floating white and repulsively useless.

I let go the branch and commenced wading to the edge of the river, which was lower since the bank had collapsed, but not low enough. Time and time again the unrelenting flood sucked my feet away from their precarious grip on the slimy river bottom; time and time again my head went under. But I fought back, struggling ever closer to my goal. I actually managed to get my hands on a clump of grass, only to watch it part from the saturated soil. I went under, floundered upright and despaired. The earth from Skamander’s vanished bank trickling dark through my fingers, I raised my arms to the skies and prayed to the Lord of All.

‘Father, Father, let me live long enough to kill Hektor!’

He heard me. He answered me. His awesome head bent down suddenly from the illimitable distances of the heavens; for some few moments he loved me sufficiently to forgive me my sin and my pride, perhaps remembering only that I was the grandson of his son, Aiakos. I felt his presence in all my being and thought I saw the fire-shot shadow of his monstrous hand hover dark over the river. Skamander sighed his submission to the Power which rules Gods as well as men. One moment I was going to die, the next I found the water a trickle around my ankles, had to jump aside as the elm collapsed into the mud.

The opposite, higher bank had crumbled; Skamander dissipated his strength in a thin sheet across the plain, a silver benison the thirsty soil drank in one gulp.

I staggered out of the river bed and sat exhausted on the drowned grass. Above me Phoibos’s chariot stood at a little past its zenith; we had been fighting for half of its journey across the vault. Wondering where the rest of my army was, I came back to reality in the shame of knowing I had lusted to kill so much that I had completely ignored my men. Would I ever learn? Or was my lust to kill a part of the madness I had surely inherited from my mother?

Shouts sounded. The Myrmidons were marching towards me, and in the distance Ajax was re-forming his forces. Greeks everywhere, but not one Trojan. I climbed aboard my car, grinning at Automedon.

‘Take me to Ajax, old friend.’

He was standing with a spear in one massive hand, his eyes dreamy. I got down, water still running off me.

‘What happened to you?’ he asked.

‘I had a wrestling match with the God Skamander.’

‘Well, you won. He’s spent.’

‘How many Trojans survived our ambush?’

‘Not many,’ he said serenely. ‘Between the pair of us we’ve managed to kill fifteen thousand of them. Perhaps as many again got back to Hektor’s army. You did good work, Achilles. You have a thirst for the blood of other men even I cannot match.’

‘I’d rather your love than my lust.’

‘Time to get back to Agamemnon,’ he said, not understanding. ‘I brought my car today.’

I rode beside him in his – well, cart is a better word than car, for it needed four wheels – while Teukros travelled in my car with Automedon.

‘Something tells me that Priam has ordered the Skaian Gate opened,’ I said, pointing towards the walls.

Ajax growled. As we drew closer it was too plain that I was right. The Skaian Gate was open and Hektor’s army streamed in ahead of Agamemnon, thwarted by the sheer number of Trojans clustered about the entrance. I glanced sideways at Ajax, showing my teeth.

‘Hades take them, Hektor is in!’ he snarled.

‘Hektor belongs to me, Ajax. You had your chance.’

‘I know it, little cousin.’

We trundled into the midst of Agamemnon’s forces and went to seek him. As usual, standing with Odysseus and Nestor. Frowning.

‘They’re closing the gate,’ I said.

‘Hektor packed them in so tightly we had no hope of turning them away – and no chance to attempt an assault ourselves. Most of them made it inside. Two detachments deliberately elected to remain shut out. Diomedes is hammering them into submission,’ said Agamemnon.

‘What of Hektor himself?’

‘Gone inside, I think. No one’s seen him.’

‘The cur! He knew I wanted him!’

Some others were coming up: Idomeneus, Menelaos, Menestheus and Machaon. Together we watched Diomedes finish off those who had volunteered to stay outside – sensible men, for when they were courting annihilation they surrendered. Liking their courage and their discipline, Diomedes took them prisoner rather than kill them. He came towards us then, jubilant.

‘Fifteen thousand of them lost by Skamander,’ said Ajax.

‘While we lost not a man more than a thousand,’ said Odysseus.

A great sigh came from the resting soldiers behind us, and a shriek of such awful agony from the top of the watchtower that we ceased to laugh.

‘Look!’ Nestor’s bony finger pointed, shaking.

Slowly we turned. Hektor stood leaning on the bronze bosses of the gate, his shield propped against it, two spears in his hand. He wore my golden armour with the alien scarlet among the helmet’s plume, and the bright purple baldric Ajax had given him shimmered with amethysts. I, who had never seen myself in that suit, saw how well it became any man who wore it – and fitted it. I should have known the moment I stood back to look at Patrokles that I had strapped him into his doom.

Hektor picked up his shield and walked a few paces forward. ‘Achilles!’ he called. ‘I have stayed to meet you!’

My eyes met Ajax’s, who nodded. I took my shield and Old Pelion from Automedon, gave him the axe. Hektor was no man to insult with an axe.

My throat tight with a trembling joy, I stepped out of the ranks of the Kings and went to meet him with measured step, like a man going to the sacrifice; I did not raise my spear and nor did he. Three paces from each other we halted, each of us intent on discovering what kind of man the other was, we who had never seen each other closer than a spear-cast. We had to speak before the duel began, and edged so close together that we could have touched. I looked into the steadfast darkness of his eyes and learned that he was much the same kind of man as I.
Except that, Achilles, his spirit is untainted. He is the perfect warrior.