Shield Of Thunder Part 19

Helen paused for a heartbeat, her mind dazed and slow, unable to take in the sudden awful fate that had overcome them. Then she took Philea in her arms, grabbed Alypius by the hand, and started downstairs after her husband. The north terrace was her only hope. It was far from the main gates where the enemy was breaking in. The terrace looked toward Troy, and beyond it the land shelved steeply down, covered with scrub and undergrowth, toward the plain of the Scamander. She could get the children down there to hide them or even reach the safety of the city.

On the next level down she heard the smas.h.i.+ng and rending of timbers, and she paused to look out of a window down into the courtyard one floor below. The invaders were pouring through a wide breach in the gates. Palace soldiers who ran to meet them fought desperately, but there were too few of them, and they fell under the weight of numbers.

Then she saw Paris running out across the courtyard, waving his two swords. He was ignored at first; then a huge black-haired warrior turned and saw him. He stepped in front of Paris, who attacked him like a madman. His attack lasted mere heartbeats, and then the black-haired warrior thrust a sword through Paris' throat. Paris fell, his lifeblood gouting out from his neck. He trembled for a moment, then lay still, his bare feet sticking pathetically out of his brown robe.

An old servant, Pamones, who had served the royal family since the days of Priam's father, tried to defend the prince's body with a spear, but he was disarmed casually by the warrior. The man grabbed the old servant by his neck. In a lull in the fighting the warrior's voice drifted up to Helen's ears.

"Where is the princess Helen, old man?" he shouted.

"In Troy, lord," the man cried, pointing in the direction of the city. "The lord Paris sent them there for safety."

The soldier flung Pamones aside, then gazed up at the palace. Helen ducked back out of sight.

"What's happening, Mama?" asked Alypius, who could see nothing of the carnage below.

Hearing pounding feet on the floor below, she picked both children up in her arms and fled up the stairs. The highest level of the palace was the square tower Paris had chosen for his scriptorium. There were shelves and drawers and boxes full of papyrus and hide scrolls. He and Helen had spent many happy days there organizing doc.u.ments in Paris' arcane method. In despair Helen looked around the tower room. There was nowhere to hide. In a daze she took the children out onto the shallow balcony, high above the jagged rocks at the base of the cliff.

"What's happening, Mama?" Alypius asked again, his small face creased with anxiety and fear. Philea was standing quietly, her blue doll held to her mouth.

Helen heard loud feet on the stairs, and the door burst open. A Mykene warrior walked in. His head was shaved, his red beard braided. He brought the smell of the slaughterhouse into the room. Other warriors jostled in the doorway.

Helen clutched the children tightly and backed away. Four warriors approached her slowly, sword in hand.

She retreated across the balcony, her gaze fixed to the four men, until she felt her calves strike the low balcony wall. Carefully she climbed up onto it. The children stopped struggling in her arms.

Alypius glanced over her shoulder to the deadly rocks far below. "I am scared, Mama!"

"Hush now," she whispered.

The powerful dark-haired warrior she had seen in the courtyard stepped out before her. He was helmless, and blood flecked his hair and armor.

"Princess Helen," he said gravely. "I am Achilles."

Hope stirred in her laboring heart. Achilles was a man of honor, it was said. He would not kill women and children.

"Lady," he said gently, sheathing his swords and holding out a hand to her. "Come with me. You are safe. King Menelaus wishes you to return to Sparta. He will make you his wife."

"And my children?" she asked, knowing the answer. "The children of Paris?"

An expression crossed his face that could have been shame, and he lowered his eyes for a heartbeat. Then he looked up at her. "You are young," he said. "There will be other children."

Helen glanced down and behind her. Far below, the sharp rocks looked like bronze spear points in the dawn light.

She relaxed then and felt all tension flowing away. Closing her eyes for a moment, she felt the warmth of the rising sun on her back. Then she opened them again and gazed at the warriors.

No longer afraid, she looked each one in the eye, a calm lingering look, as a mother might look on wayward children. She saw their expressions change. They knew what she was about to do. Each one lost his look of hungry ferocity.

"Do not do this!" Achilles implored her. "Remember who you are. You do not belong among these foreigners. You are Helen of Sparta."

"No, Achilles, I am Helen of Troy," she said. Hugging the children to her, she kissed them both. "Close your eyes, dear ones," she whispered. "Squeeze them shut. And when you open them again, Papa will be here."

Achilles darted forward, but too late.

Helen closed her eyes and fell backward into the void.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

BATTLE FOR THE SCAMANDER.

Kalliades leaned against a dripping tree trunk and peered into the darkness in the direction of Troy. The rainy night was as thick as a blindfold around his eyes. He turned back to where he could just see the hundred warriors sitting gloomily around sputtering campfires. Having ridden from Dardanos with all speed, they were merely half a day from the Golden City but had been forced to halt by the moonless night. They were all frustrated and angry and consoled only by the fact that there would be no fighting at Troy until the dawn.

Kalliades had been a soldier since he was fifteen. He had been in hundreds of battles, had suffered the dry mouth and full bladder before a fight, had seen friends suffer a slow agonized death from a belly thrust or the poison of gangrene. It was the same for every man waiting in that woody glade. Yet they were all, to a man, desperate for the first glimmer of dawn so that they could mount up, ride to Troy, and take on the Mykene army. Many of them would die.

Perhaps they all would.

The messenger from Priam to the Dardanos garrison had arrived tired and travel-stained at Parnio's Folly. Banokles and Kalliades had ridden down to speak to him where he stood on the other side of the chasm. Banokles had ordered him to cross, and the man had looked doubtfully at the single narrow span Khalkeus' workers had erected so far. But he was a Royal Eagle, and his head was high and his stride confident as he crossed the narrow bridge. Only as he stepped on to safe ground could they see the fear in his eyes and the sweat on his brow.

"General," he said to Banokles, who scowled, "Troy is under attack! Agamemnon has landed hundreds of s.h.i.+ps at the Bay of Herakles. King's Joy is taken, and Prince Paris is dead. Our infantry is trying to stop them at the river Scamander. King Priam commands you to ride to the city's aid."

Kalliades glanced at his friend and saw the excitement on his face.

"We'll ride immediately," Banokles replied, not trying to conceal his delight. "We'll leave a small force here and take my Thrakians."

"Not the Thrakians," the messenger said, lowering his voice as both Trojan and Thrakian soldiers started to gather. "The king wants only loyal Trojan soldiers to come to the defense of the city. He said the Thrakians were to guard the fortress of Dardanos."

Kalliades snorted. Had everyone in Troy forgotten that he and Banokles had been Mykene soldiers only a few years previously? He gave orders that the messenger be given food and water, then said to Banokles, "It is all very well to say 'ride immediately.' But how? A man can walk across this bridge, but we cannot take horses across. And it is an extra day's ride to go around."

The stocky figure of Khalkeus, who had been hovering within earshot, pushed forward and said impatiently, "It is a simple problem, easily solved. My workmen will fix a line of st.u.r.dy planks crosswise along the length of the bridge, widening it to the pace of a tall man. Then the horses can be blindfolded and led across in single file. It is quite simple," he repeated.

"Will it take their weight?" Banokles asked doubtfully.

"Of course," the engineer said irritably. "It will take whatever weight I choose it to take."

Kalliades glanced at the sky. "How long will it take?"

"As long as it takes to stop answering stupid questions." The redheaded engineer turned on his heel and started hurling orders at his workmen. Within moments, men were sawing planks and others were running to fetch more timber.

Kalliades and Banokles walked back to where Tudhaliyas waited quietly with his men, already dressed to ride.

"Will you join us in the defense of Troy?" Kalliades asked, though he could guess the Hitt.i.te's answer.

Tudhaliyas shook his head ruefully. "No, my friend. And you would not want me to. If my men and I were to fight for Troy, then my father could never agree to come to the city's aid. As it is, I shall return and send word of your plight, and maybe the emperor will send an army."

"Priam might well prefer the aid of your three hundred men now than a Hitt.i.te army camped at his gates some day in the future," Kalliades said. "That might seem more like a threat than the helping hand of an ally."

Tudhaliyas smiled. "Perhaps you are right. War makes friends of enemies and enemies of friends, does it not, Mykene?"

With that he turned and mounted his horse, and the Hitt.i.te warriors set off toward the north.

Banokles hawked and spit on the ground. "Good riddance," he said. "Never liked the cowsons."

Kalliades sighed. "Those three hundred cowsons would have been very useful," he said. "As it is, it's just you and me and our fifty of the Horse."

"I will ride with you, General, with my fifty," said a voice.

The Thrakian leader Hillas, Lord of the Western Mountain, strode down the defile toward them. His hair and beard were braided, and his face was adorned with blue streaks in the Kikones fas.h.i.+on.

"Priam says the Thrakian warriors should stay here and defend Dardanos," Banokles said reluctantly. "I don't know why. Any one of you Kikones boys is worth two of his poxy Eagles."

Hillas chuckled. "We all know that if Troy falls, Dardanos is lost. Then the Kikones will never regain their homeland. I have pledged my allegiance to King Periklos, and I will fight for him in Troy. My men will ride with you whether we're wanted or not. Priam will not reject our aid when we stand before him with Mykene heads on our lances."

Now, in the rain-dark wood, Kalliades gave up wis.h.i.+ng the dawn would come and returned to the campfire, where Banokles was lying on his back in his armor.

"We'll be in Troy tomorrow," Banokles said happily. "We'll have a good fight, kill a hundred of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d enemy, then I'll go home and see Red and have a few jugs of wine."

"The perfect day," Kalliades remarked.

Banokles lifted his head and turned to him, firelight glinting on his blond hair and beard. "What's wrong with you?" he asked.

Kalliades lay down beside him on the wet gra.s.s. "Nothing," he said, and he realized it was true. He was cold and rain-soaked and hungry, facing a battle the next day against overwhelming odds, yet he felt a rare sense of contentment.

He smiled. "I think we've spent too long together, Banokles," he said. "I'm getting more like you every day."

He saw his friend frown in the firelight and open his mouth to reply, but suddenly there was a commotion of stamping and neighing among the tethered horses. Some of the men climbed wearily to their feet to calm the horses.

Banokles said, "It's that big b.a.s.t.a.r.d black horse again, causing trouble. I don't know why we brought it with us."

"Yes, you do," Kalliades told him patiently. "You were there when Hektor said the horse should be treated with honor as a hero of Troy. We couldn't leave a Trojan hero with Vollin and his Thrakians."

As well as their own mounts, the small force from Dardanos was leading the last twelve of Helikaon's golden horses, three of them pregnant mares, and the great horse that had jumped the chasm with Queen Halysia and her son on his back.

"We ought to call it something," Banokles said thoughtfully. "We can't just keep calling it 'that big b.a.s.t.a.r.d horse.' It ought to have a name."

"What do you suggest?"

"a.s.s Face."

There were quiet chuckles from the listening men around the campfire. "You call all your horses a.s.s Face, Banokles," said the rider sitting next to him.

"Only the good ones," Banokles said indignantly.

"We should call it Hero," Kalliades suggested.

"That's it, Hero," Banokles said. "Good name. Perhaps he'll be less trouble now that he's got a name." He s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably where he lay and with a grunt of satisfaction pulled a small branch out from under him.

"By Ares, that was a leap, though, wasn't it?" he went on. "Would you have made it, do you think?"

Kalliades shook his head. "I wouldn't have even tried."

"I wish I'd seen it," Banokles mused. "That must have been a sight. With the queen and the boy on his back."

He was silent for a moment. "Shame she died. That queen, I mean. After a jump like that."

Kalliades thought how Banokles had changed over the years. In the days when they first had fought together, he had talked only of drinking, rutting, and battles he had fought. His proudest boast was that he could p.i.s.s up a tree higher than any man.

But the last few years had mellowed him. Kalliades knew that his marriage to Red was responsible. He adored his wife and made no secret of it. His ambition now, he often told Kalliades, was to win the war and retire with honor from the Trojan Horse and start a small farm with Red. Kalliades could not see him as a farmer, but he never told his friend that.

When the priestess Piria had died, Banokles had been genuinely saddened. He rarely mentioned her, though once, when Kalliades did, Banokles said shortly, "She died in battle saving her friend's life, didn't she? What any warrior worth the name would do." Then he would say no more.

And here he was, Banokles One-Ear, speaking with respect of a dead woman he never had met.

"General!" Kalliades was pulled from his reverie by a soldier's shout. "Dawn's coming! We can ride!"

Echios the Rhodian hated blood. Mixed with mud on the flat plain of the Scamander, it was slippery and treacherous. Drying on the hilt of a sword, it stuck like horse glue and made the weapon hard to handle.

A fifteen-year veteran of Troy's Scamandrian regiment, Echios had fought in the distant south in Lykia, as far east as Zeleia, and in the snowy northern mountains of Thraki, but he never had thought he'd be facing an enemy army in front of the Golden City.

A sword flashed toward his face. Swaying to his right, Echios swept up a vicious two-handed cut that glanced off the edge of the enemy's s.h.i.+eld and smashed into his face. The soldier was punched from his feet. Echios stepped over him.

At first light the Scamandrians had engaged the Mykene phalanx south of the river. The Mykene veterans were heavily armored and in a tight formation. There was no give in them, and step by step through the long morning they had pushed the Trojan forces back toward the riverbank. The Scamandrians were fighting on the right, the Heraklion regiment to the left. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d Heraklions were the first ones to give, Echios thought, and the day would have been lost except for a nearly suicidal cavalry charge. A hundred Trojan Horse, the last in the city, smashed into the flank of the Mykene phalanx, a huge man on a great charger at their head. Echios and the beleaguered defenders had cheered as they saw it was Antiphones, the king's fat son. That side of the phalanx crumpled, and the Trojan infantry rushed in, hacking and cutting. Since then it had been steady hand-to-hand slaughter. The Trojans were gaining ground step by b.l.o.o.d.y step.

A Mykene warrior slashed wildly at him, off balance in the mud and blood, and Echios dodged the cut, deflecting it off his s.h.i.+eld. Mykene armor rose high around the throat, and so the Trojan dropped to one knee under his s.h.i.+eld and speared his sword up into the man's groin. As he fell, his helm came off. Echios, leaping up, chopped him across the brow, scattering his brains. Echios then stepped over him.

He risked a glimpse to his right, where his little brother, Boros, was fighting. He could not see him, but it was hard to tell one blood-covered warrior from another. Echios worried about his brother. He had suffered a sword cut to the head in a skirmish in Thraki and could not see well out of his left eye. Boros had told no one, fearing losing his place, and so Echios had found him a tower s.h.i.+eld. It was an old-fas.h.i.+oned piece of equipment, and the other men laughed at him, but it protected his left side better than any round buckler could. He wondered if the boy was still alive.

A blood-drenched figure stepped in front of him, a Thessalian by his fancy armor. Echios deflected the sword thrust on his s.h.i.+eld, then drove his sword into the Thessalian's neck. Fancy armor but no neck protection, he thought as the man fell in front of him, his lifeblood gouting out of his throat.

An enemy stumbled to the mud in front of him with a great wound in his thigh. Echios plunged his sword into the man's face. He shuddered and lay still.

A huge Mykene ran at him. He was fast and powerful, and the speed of his attack surprised Echios. Their blades met time and again, and Echios was forced back. The Mykene grinned at him arrogantly. Again he attacked, and Echios sent back a savage riposte that opened a wound in the man's cheek. Now it was Echios pus.h.i.+ng forward, but the Mykene parried each stroke. Suddenly the Mykene stepped in, their blades clashed, and the Mykene sent a right hook at Echios' face. Echios grunted and fell back, stumbling in the mud. The Mykene swept his sword at Echios' head. Echios dodged and lanced his sword up into the Mykene's belly. As the enemy soldier fell, Echios paused for a breath, then stepped over his body.

He realized his sword was getting blunt. He always carried a spare on his back, but he'd used that one already. He'd have to watch out for a sharper one. After all, there was a chance he'd meet Achilles the Slayer. Everyone knew he was out there somewhere. Look for the thick of the fight, they said; that's where he'll be. Just like Hektor, Echios thought. And we could do with him him right now. He'll be here in five days, General Thyrsites said. With the Trojan Horse. Then these pigging Mykene won't know what hit them. right now. He'll be here in five days, General Thyrsites said. With the Trojan Horse. Then these pigging Mykene won't know what hit them.

In front of him a Trojan rider he knew called Olganos had been unhorsed. He was bleeding from several wounds and seemed dazed. Two enemy soldiers ran at him. Echios hurdled the horse's dead body and lunged at one of the soldiers. His sword skewered into the man's armpit and broke. He dived forward and swept up the man's fallen sword, rolling to his feet. The second man lanced his blade into Olganos' chest before Echios could hammer the sword into his skull. Olganos fell facedown in the mud and lay still. Echios stepped over the bodies.

Above the clash of battle and the screams of the dying he heard the sound of hoofbeats. There was no enemy soldier facing him, so he risked turning to look back toward the river.

Galloping over the plain and thundering across one of the temporary bridges toward them came a troop of riders led by a big warrior with golden hair and beard. He was waving two swords, and his mouth was open in a battle cry as he rode. Behind him Echios could see Trojan Horse and painted tribesmen.

Reinforcements, Echios thought. About pigging time!

He turned back to the battle just in time to glimpse the killing blow that took out his throat.