Shield Of Thunder Part 31

"I will help," said the boy Periklos, walking over to stand alongside Kalliades. "The city of Troy and its people have given me sanctuary. The lady Andromache has been kind, taking me and my brother into her home when we first arrived. Our nurse Myrine has been given a place in the royal household, though she is old and infirm and needs caring for herself. If I can do anything to repay the people of the city, I will do it."

He turned to the Thrakian tribesman. "Have you any objections, Hillas?"

The man shook his head. "No, my king. It is an honorable gesture. And you will be a better teacher than any of this rabble." He grinned and gestured to his men.

At that moment they heard the sound of shouting from nearby. They heard running feet, then more shouts, screams, and the clash of metal.

Drawing their swords, Kalliades and Banokles ran as one toward the source of the sounds.

A crowd had gathered around one of Troy's two wells. Three men were on the ground, two apparently dead and one nursing a broken arm. The six guards at the well all had swords in their hands and were facing the angry mob. An empty bucket lay on the ground, its precious water soaking into the earth.

"What's going on?" Banokles demanded.

One of the guards told him. "The well is dry, General. These fools were fighting over the last bucket of water."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

AMBUSH.

Far to the south of the city Skorpios lay on his belly on rocky ground at the crest of a ridge, gazing down on the long train of wagons stretching along the valley of the Scamander.

Skorpios smiled. In his years as a scout for the Trojan Horse he had never seen such a tempting, slow-moving target. He counted forty donkey wagons, followed by ten oxcarts. From time to time the donkeys were halted so that the slower-moving oxen could catch up. There were more than three hundred riders guarding the train, armed with spears and lances. But behind Skorpios, waiting in the woods for his report, were more than six hundred Trojan Horse.

Skorpios wondered what was in the oxcarts. Heavy armor, perhaps, for the Mykene infantry or copper ingots from Kypros. Or jugs of wine from Lesbos.

He rolled onto his back, and as he did so, his stomach gurgled. He was hungry, and it had been a long time since he had tasted wine. The last jugs of wine they had captured had been taken after their final attack on the convoys traveling between the Bay of Troy and the armies camped outside the city. Agamemnon had learned caution since then. Every convoy on that busy route now was surrounded by an army of outriders, heavily armored and bristling with spears and lances.

Hektor reluctantly had called off the attacks. Instead he targeted the troops Agamemnon sent into the woods and valleys of the Ida foothills to hunt down the Trojan Horse. Hektor's hors.e.m.e.n knew the heavily wooded country far better than the invading forces did, and they led the enemy on many a hazardous chase, luring them into blind gullies to be attacked and killed or fading away through hidden pa.s.ses when the Trojans seemed to be trapped. Those pursuits always ended in death for the enemy. As a result, Agamemnon's ally kings had refused to send their forces into the woods of Mount Ida even to cut down the oak trees that furnished them with timber and firewood.

But the summer was pa.s.sing, and now Hektor's own supplies were running low. These were the first wagons they had seen for thirty days and the first ever this far south.

Skorpios rolled back onto his stomach and peered over the ridge again. The train was almost level with him now. Its leader was a tall rider in black helm and breastplate. Skorpios tried to remember what Mestares, Hektor's right-hand-man, had instructed them about enemy armor. Achilles always wore black armor-everyone knew that-but Skorpios doubted that Achilles the Slayer was leading a lowly supply convoy. Some of his Myrmidons, his bodyguards, also wore black in tribute to their leader, although most wore the ordinary armor of Thessaly. The only other warrior who always wore black was Meriones, Odysseus' friend and an aide to the king of Kretos. Skorpios could see no Kretan armor below him.

He heard scuffling on the rocks behind him, and Justinos scrambled up alongside. "Well, lad? Who do you think they are?" the big man asked, looking cautiously over the ridge.

"I can't tell. Fifty wagons, though."

"Hmm," Justinos said. "Maybe some foreign merchant thought he could make a killing sending supplies to Agamemnon's forces. Thought it was worth the risk. They must have beached their s.h.i.+ps in a cove somewhere to the south."

Skorpios yawned. They had camped far to the south that night and had ridden since dawn. Hektor kept them always on the move, every night a new camp. The days were long and hard, the nights short. Skorpios had had nothing to eat since dawn on the previous day.

"I'm hungry," he complained, not for the first time. "I'm with Banokles on this. You can't do battle on an empty stomach."

"Then if Banokles still lives, he'll be moaning even more loudly than you, lad. But those wagons could mean a fine feast for us tonight. It would be pleasant to eat something other than horse meat."

They crawled away from the ridge and climbed down the rocky slope to where their mounts were tethered. It was a short ride back to the glade where Hektor and the Trojan Horse were waiting. Some of the riders mounted their horses as soon as they spotted the scouts, but Hektor remained seated by a campfire, burnis.h.i.+ng the gold and silver of his great breastplate.

"Can you tell what they're carrying?" he asked them as they slid off their mounts.

Justinos shook his head. "The wagons are all tightly covered with canvas. But there's about fifty of them. And they're heavy."

"And their guard?"

"A good three hundred. Their leader is all in black."

Hektor raised his eyebrows. "Could it be Achilles?"

Justinos shook his head. "I have never seen him, but they say he is a big man, as big as you, lord."

Hektor nodded. "Then it is not Achilles," Justinos told him. "This warrior is tall but slender."

Hektor sat for a while, deep in thought, until one of the riders asked him, "Do you fear a trap, Hektor?"

"Maybe," he replied. "If I were to set an ambush, it would be with a large slow-moving convoy. But it is tempting. Our scouts have discovered no enemy forces lying in wait. There are no troops south of us; we can be sure of that."

Justinos added, "And we have scouted north to within sight of Troy."

Hektor made his decision. He stood up. "Then let's kill them all," he said grimly.

The riders trotted their mounts back up to the ridge. Skorpios felt the familiar hot fear flaring in his belly as he thought of the battle ahead. There were around six hundred hors.e.m.e.n left in this main force, plus the two smaller groups Hektor had deployed to the country north and east of Troy. They easily outnumbered the riders guarding the wagons, yet Skorpios felt sick with apprehension. His body was covered with cold sweat, and his head ached. He knew it would pa.s.s when the battle was under way. It always did.

Reaching the crest of the ridge, he saw Hektor dig his heels into his mount and gallop down the gentle slope toward the river, his riders streaming after him. The supply train was on the other side of the Scamander, but the river was just a trickle now. The six hundred riders galloped across it, a great dust cloud swirling around them.

Skorpios lay low on his mount's neck and peered through the dust ahead of them. He saw the wagons slow to a halt. The riders guarding them were heavily armed with spears and lances as well as swords. They stood their ground, staying by the wagons and turning to face the charge rather than peeling off to meet the advancing cavalry. He saw Hektor's sword raised high and swirling in a circle above his head. Surround them!

Skorpios, riding side by side with Justinos, deflected a flying spear with his s.h.i.+eld and galloped his mount around to the rear of the donkey train. He singled out an enemy rider and charged him. The man launched his spear as Skorpios bore down on him, but it was poorly aimed, and the Trojan dodged it easily and plunged his sword into the man's throat. He blocked a vicious sword cut to the head by another enemy rider and hacked at the man's arm, half severing it. He spun around just in time to see a lance plunging toward him and got his s.h.i.+eld in front of it, but the power of the blow unhorsed him, and he hit the ground hard.

Many of the donkeys started panicking and trying to get away from the melee, pulling the wagons in every direction. Skorpios rolled out of the way as a heavy wagon wheel rumbled past him. Then he scrambled up, looking for his horse.

At that moment everything changed. The canvas on the wagon in front of him was ripped open from the inside by sharp knives, and twenty or more armed warriors came surging out. From wagons all along the line soldiers were leaping, armed with swords.

It was a trap!

Two Mykene soldiers in leather breastplates jumped down from the wagon and ran at him with raised swords. Skorpios deflected one sword cut off the edge of his s.h.i.+eld and parried the other with his own weapon. A rider appeared out of the dust cloud. It was Justinos. He hacked down one of the Mykene with a killing cut to the back of his neck. Skorpios dodged another sword thrust from the first Mykene. He ducked and plunged his sword into the man's groin.

His eyes stinging from the dust and grit in the air, Skorpios looked around again for a horse. An enemy rider backed toward him out of the dust cloud, defending himself against a furious attack from a Trojan horseman. He did not see Skorpios, who grabbed his ankle and dragged him from his mount. Skorpios plunged his sword into the man's face and leaped onto the horse. He turned the beast and galloped toward the front of the donkey train, where he could see the tall warrior in black armor.

But Hektor got there first. He, too, had been unhorsed, but he made no attempt to find a mount. He ran with a snarl toward the leader in black, ducked to pick up a spear, and hurled it at him with ferocious strength. The rider got his s.h.i.+eld in the way, but the spear shattered it and punched into his armor, throwing him from his horse.

Despite the power of the blow, the warrior rolled and stood up, his helm falling to the ground. He was blond and handsome, his hair in long braids.

"Patroklos!" Hektor whispered.

Patroklos smiled and launched a vicious sword attack. The two were well matched in skill, but Hektor was the bigger man and the stronger. He knew that, but he also knew that Patroklos might have the best of the speed.

Their blades met time and again, with Patroklos constantly being forced back. But the Myrmidon grinned arrogantly. Again Hektor attacked, and Patroklos sent back a lightning riposte that opened a wound in Hektor's cheek. Now it was Patroklos pus.h.i.+ng forward, but Hektor parried each stroke. Suddenly Hektor stepped in. Their blades clashed, and Hektor sent a mighty punch to Patroklos' jaw. Patroklos grunted and went down. Hektor swept his sword at Patroklos' head. Patroklos rolled, then lanced his sword up at Hektor's groin.

As Hektor's blade blocked the thrust, he twisted his wrist and the sword flashed back at Patroklos' belly. The blade deflected off the black breastplate but lanced into the Myrmidon's side. Patroklos scrambled away and got up, then circled to the left, trying to guard the wound.

Hektor surged forward into a riposte that all but tore the helm from his head. Still, he knew Patroklos was weakening. He saw the blood streaming from the man's side and down his leg and knew it was only a matter of time. The Myrmidon had only one chance: a lightning attack and a killing blow to the head or neck. Hektor gave him the opening. Patroklos' sword flashed forward. Hektor ducked and rammed his sword up under Patroklos' breastplate, driving into the heart.

Before Patroklos. .h.i.t the ground, Hektor was turning, checking the thrust of the battle. Donkeys were dragging their carts away frantically, throwing up great dust clouds. Many riders still were mounted, but some of the horses had walked clear of the battle and were standing waiting, as they had been trained to do. Hektor ran to one and leaped onto it. All he could see around him was clouds of dust. The battle was a melee. It was impossible to see who had the upper hand.

Hektor saw a movement at the corner of his eye and got his s.h.i.+eld up just in time to block a sword cut to the throat. The enemy rider hacked at him again. Hektor dodged the blow, then thrust his sword into the man's side. The weapon got stuck and was ripped from Hektor's grip as the rider's horse reared. Weaponless, Hektor saw another Mykene rider bearing down on him, sword raised. He put up his s.h.i.+eld, but a Trojan rider appeared beside the enemy horseman and plunged his sword into the man's unprotected armpit.

Justinos dragged his sword out, and the enemy rider slumped from his horse. Justinos grinned at Hektor, who nodded his thanks.

Just then an enemy horseman rode out of the dust cloud, his lance leveled at Justinos' back. Hektor shouted a warning. Justinos half turned, but it was too late. The lance plunged through his back with such force that it exited in a b.l.o.o.d.y eruption at his belly. Justinos gave one agonized look at Hektor, then slumped over his horse's neck. His mount trotted away into the dust.

With a roar, Hektor pulled out his dagger and launched himself at the enemy rider. The man, having lost his lance, scrabbled desperately for his sword. He was too late. Hektor grabbed him by his breastplate and pulled him in, slicing his throat with the dagger. He took the dead man's sword, then heeled his horse and galloped around the battlefield, peering through the dust, counting corpses and wounded. An enemy rider spotted him and came after him, lance leveled. Hektor swayed his body at the last moment, and the lance went by him. He beheaded the rider with one sweep of the sword.

Out of the dust came Mestares on his mount Warlord. His s.h.i.+eld bearer was leaning heavily to one side, guarding a wound.

"They have us, Hektor!" he shouted. "We are outnumbered. We cannot win!"

Cursing, Hektor dragged his battle horn from his back and put his lips to it. He blew the short notes to signal retreat. For a few heartbeats no one seemed to have heard; then Trojan riders started appearing out of the dust, some injured, some helping wounded colleagues. Within moments they were streaming away, heading back toward the river. Hektor gathered the uninjured riders and forged his way into the chasing enemy hors.e.m.e.n, forcing them back, making s.p.a.ce for the Trojan Horse to get away.

Finally Hektor heeled his mount and galloped back toward the wooded hills.

The next morning at dawn Skorpios sat in the tree line at the point where the Scamander broke out of the woods and dipped under a wooden bridge before joining the flat plain.

He was supposed to be scouting, but his eyes kept misting up. He had always feared for his own life before battles, but never for that of Justinos. The big man had seemed indestructible. The two had ridden together for years, first with Ennion, Kerio, Ursos, and Olganos, now all dead. He was the only one left of the six.

The power of his grief had unmanned him. He could not sleep in the night. As he listened to the other riders snoring around him, he kept going over and over in his mind how that last battle should have gone. Justinos always had looked out for him, watched his back, yet he had failed to do that for his old friend. The thought churned around and around until his brain was worn out; then he fell into a shallow troubled sleep.

He woke before dawn, his body weary, his mood melancholy. Hektor sent him back to the site of the battle to see if the enemy forces had taken away their dead and wounded. They had. Even the broken wagons had been carried away for firewood.

In the night Skorpios had decided that when the war ended, he would return to his father's farm. A veteran soldier now, with years in the Trojan Horse behind him, he no longer would be afraid of the old man. With the gold Hektor would give him for his loyal service he would buy a small house and help his father with the cattle and sheep. The settlement lay far to the east, on the edge of Hitt.i.te lands. Now, for the first time, he wondered whether the farm was still there, his father and brothers still waking in the dark each morning to start work or sleeping out in the fields to guard the livestock from predators, his mother working from dawn to dusk to keep the family fed. His youngest sister would be twelve now, he thought, almost a woman. He shook his head sorrowfully. He knew nothing about them anymore. Perhaps his brothers had left to become soldiers. If they had, maybe they were dead, too.

Suddenly Skorpios felt very much alone. The last image of Justinos kept flas.h.i.+ng into his mind. He found he could not visualize his friend's face smiling or in repose, just in the agony of death. He closed his eyes in pain.

When he opened them again, he saw the small dot of a rider in the distance, coming from the direction of Troy. The horseman stopped and got off his mount. Skorpios thought he could heard the man shouting something, but he was too far away to hear.

After a while the rider got back on his horse and continued along the bank of the river. As he got closer, Skorpios could see that he was garbed in black armor. The young Trojan gazed at him in bemus.e.m.e.nt. A single armored soldier all the way out here. He must be one of ours, he thought. Surely he could not be an enemy warrior, riding on his own in such hostile land.

The horseman stopped again. This time Skorpios could hear the words he shouted, borne on the northerly breeze. "Hektor! Hektor! Come down and fight! Come and fight me, you coward!"

Skorpios watched for a long time as the rider worked his way down the river, stopping every few hundred paces. He wondered what to do: go back and report to Hektor or keep his eye on the warrior. There were other scouts out, so he settled down to watch, his back against a tree, a.s.suming others would be telling the strange news to Hektor.

He was observing the rider still when he heard a whisper of movement behind him and turned to find a sword at his throat.

"You would be a dead man now," Hektor said, sheathing the sword and emerging from the undergrowth.

"I'm sorry, lord," Skorpios replied, his face flus.h.i.+ng. "I let you down."

The Trojan prince squatted down beside him. "You look unwell, lad," he commented. "You lost a good friend yesterday."

Skorpios nodded miserably. Hektor put a hand on his shoulder. "Justinos was a fine warrior. I have seldom seen better. Make sure you get some food today; then you will sleep better tonight.

"Now," he said, turning his gaze on the rider in black. "What do you think of this?"

"I think he is a madman. He must know there are hundreds of warriors in these woods who could ride down and kill him in a heartbeat."

"Yet he knows they will not, because he is a man of honor, and such men believe against all the evidence that others are the same." There was a long silence. "That is Achilles, lad, and yesterday I killed his friend Patroklos."

"Will you go down and fight him?" Skorpios blurted out the question without thinking.

Hektor thought for a long moment, then said, "The time will probably come, Skorpios, when I will. But I will not fight him today, when there is nothing resting on it except the honor of two men."

Is that not enough? Skorpios wanted to say, but he remained silent.

The next day the rider was a priest of Ares. Skorpios sat his horse in plain sight high on the ridge with others of the Trojan Horse. They watched as the priest, garbed in black robes with twin red sashes, traveled up the river, stopping from time to time to shout out the challenge from Achilles to Hektor. The Trojans watched him for much of the day until, as the sun fell into the horizon, he returned to the city.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

THE WRATH OF ACHILLES.

On the third day the rider was the king of Ithaka.

Mounted on a st.u.r.dy bay gelding and wearing a wide straw hat to guard his head from the blazing sun, Odysseus was sorely conscious that he lacked the grace of Achilles or even that of the priest. He recalled that Penelope once had told him teasingly that he rode like a sack of carrots. He had confessed, "A sack of carrots would be ashamed to ride this badly, my love."

He walked the horse slowly to where the Scamander gushed under a wooden bridge short of the foothills, dismounted gratefully, and settled down to wait. He had brought enough food for two but was prepared to enjoy the peace and silence of a day alone.

The sun was starting to fall down the sky when he finally saw a horseman coming toward him out of the tree line. He could tell at a glance it was Hektor by the rider's size and riding style.

As he got closer, Odysseus could see that the Trojan prince had aged a good deal since they last had met. Hektor reined in his mount and regarded him silently for a moment, then got down.

"Well, king," he said coolly, "we meet again in strange times. Are you Achilles' mouthpiece today?"

Odysseus chewed on a piece of bread and swallowed. Ignoring the question, he gestured to the black horse Hektor was riding. "Where is Ares? He cannot be old yet. I remember him as a foal not six years ago."

"Great Ares is dead." Hektor sighed, his stiff demeanor vanis.h.i.+ng as he sat down on the riverbank. "He fell at the battle of the Scamander, lanced through the chest."

"I saw that," Odysseus replied, frowning, "but then I saw him rise up and brave the river to save your troops."

Hektor nodded, his face sorrowful. "He had a great heart. But it was gravely wounded. He fell and died before we could reach the city."