Shield Of Thunder Part 35

Kalliades raised his eyebrows. "Great Zeus, lad, if my father were a goldsmith, I would have stayed at home and learned his trade and not sold my skills with a sword."

"My mother is a Trojan woman, and she told me I must fight for the honor of our city. And she wanted me to find out if Echios was still alive. He was her firstborn, you see. She had not seen him for fifteen years."

Banokles narrowed his eyes against the sunlight and commented, "Hors.e.m.e.n."

The far dust cloud had resolved itself into two dust clouds, and both were heading for Troy. They were moving fast, as if one group of hors.e.m.e.n were chasing the other. Kalliades leaned forward on the battlement wall, frustrated by his inability to see more clearly at that distance. He glanced at Boros and saw that the young man was peering in the wrong direction. Kalliades moved as if to hit the lad on the left side of his face, pulling his punch at the last moment. Boros did not even flinch.

"Boros," he said. Boros turned his head, then jumped when he saw Kalliades' fist close to his face.

"Can you see anything out of your left eye?"

The lad shook his head. "No. I used to be able to see light and shadow, but that has gone now. Everything is dark. I was injured in Thraki, you see."

Kalliades knew that a one-eyed soldier could not last long in a pitched battle. It was remarkable the lad was still alive.

He turned his attention back to the hors.e.m.e.n in the distance. There were two groups of riders. In front were about fifty men being chased at a furious pace by maybe two hundred. They had crossed the Scamander and were racing across the plain toward the city. The men on the walls shouted to their comrades to come and watch the race, and below them enemy soldiers were being ordered from tents and from the shadows of ruined houses. They were arming themselves quickly, putting on sword belts and helms, collecting lances and spears, bows and quivers of arrows.

Then someone cried out, "The Trojan Horse!"

Now Kalliades could see that the riders in front bore the black-and-white crested helms of Hektor's cavalry. They were lying low on their horses' necks, urging their mounts on with whipped reins and shouts. The chasing hors.e.m.e.n were hampered by the dust being thrown up by their quarry and had fallen back some way as both groups galloped up the slope from the plain toward the city.

As the front riders thundered across the wooden bridge into the lower town, enemy soldiers started loosing arrows at them, and from all sides lances and spears were thrown. Some appeared to hit their targets, and two hors.e.m.e.n on the edge of the group went down. The soldiers watching from the walls were yelling to urge their riders on.

Kalliades found his heart in his mouth as the leading hors.e.m.e.n galloped up through the ruined town. Come on, he thought. Come on, you can make it! The enemy riders seemed to have slowed further.

"Open the gates!" someone shouted, and the cry was picked up all along the walls. "Open the gates quickly. Open the gates! Let them in!"

Then realization hit Kalliades like a blow to the face. His blood went cold. "No!" he shouted. Pus.h.i.+ng desperately through the ranks of cheering soldiers, he raced along the wall to the battlements above the Scaean Gate. Below him men were gathering eagerly to lift the ma.s.sive locking bar and open the gates.

"No!" he bellowed down at them. "Stop! Don't open the gates!" But his voice could not be heard above the shouts of hundreds of men, and he ran down the stone steps, waving his arms and yelling frantically.

"Don't open the gates! By all the G.o.ds, don't open the gates!"

But the ma.s.sive oak doors already were groaning open, and with split-second timing, the riders thundered through the gap. There were more than fifty of them, garbed in the armor of the Trojan Horse and armed with spears. Their horses' hooves kicked up a storm of whirling dust as they slowed and circled inside the gates. Behind them the guards started to close the gates again.

They were heaving the locking bar back into place when one of them fell with a spear in his belly.

Kalliades drew his sword and ran for the nearest rider. He shouted, "Kill them! They're the enemy!" and lanced his blade into the man's side, behind his breastplate.

He saw a sword sweeping toward his head from another rider. He ducked under the horse's belly and leaped up to spear the man from the other side. As the rider fell, Kalliades grabbed his s.h.i.+eld.

He glimpsed Banokles beside him. His friend powered into the enemy h.o.r.es.e.m.e.n, slas.h.i.+ng and killing. Kalliades shouted to him, "Defend the gates!" But both of them were blocked from reaching the gates by the press of horses and riders.

Kalliades gutted one enemy warrior and parried a blow from a second, backhanding his s.h.i.+eld into the man's face. He glanced desperately at the gates again. Enemy warriors in the stolen armor of the Trojan Horse had their hands to the locking bar and were attempting to lift it. Kalliades slashed and cut, pushed and shoved his way toward them. He brained one of the men with his s.h.i.+eld and threw his weight onto the locking bar.

He realized that young Boros was at his side and yelled, "Help me here, soldier!"

Boros grinned at him, then punched him hard on the jaw.

As Kalliades staggered back, Boros kicked him in the face. Kalliades went flying, dazed, barely holding to consciousness. Bright lights were whirling around his head. He lay stunned, watching in horror as more of the enemy hors.e.m.e.n grabbed the great oak locking bar and heaved it off its brackets. The high gates started to open slowly and then more quickly as they were pushed from the outside.

And the enemy poured in.

Kalliades, lying s.h.i.+elded in the s.p.a.ce behind one of the open doors, tried to get to his feet, shaking his head to clear it. Then he realized that the flaxen-haired soldier was standing looking down at him. As Kalliades tried to rise, the young man placed the point of his sword at Kalliades' throat, pus.h.i.+ng him back to the ground.

"Boros!" he whispered.

"Boros died long ago, at the battle for the Scamander," the soldier replied triumphantly. "I am Asios, first son of Alektruon, loyal servant of Agamemnon King, and I am here to avenge my father and bring the proud Trojans to their knees."

He leaned forward, pressing on the sword at Kalliades' throat. Blood started to flow. Kalliades could not speak or move.

"It was so easy to take that idiot's place when his entire company had been wiped out and when the general of his regiment couldn't even be bothered to learn his soldiers' names. And it amused me to fool the great Kalliades, the thinker, the planner-the traitor to Mykene. Die, then, traitor!"

His face hardened, and he tensed to thrust his sword through Kalliades' neck. At that last moment Kalliades saw Banokles step up behind the boy, sword raised. With one ferocious sweep of his blade he beheaded him. Hitting the gate, the head bounced onto the ground.

Banokles put out his hand and dragged Kalliades to his feet. "He was talkative," he observed. "Always a mistake. Are you all right?" Kalliades nodded, swallowing blood, still unable to speak.

"Come on, then," Banokles said grimly. "We've got a city to die for."

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

THE LAST BARRICADE.

With enemy warriors hard on their heels, Kalliades and Banokles ran up the stone steps to the west of the Scaean Gate. On the top of the wall Banokles nodded to his comrade, then turned and raced away. He was heading for the next steps down so that he could work his way around behind the new barricade. Kalliades would stay and ensure that the wall was secure.

A Mykene warrior, heavily armored, appeared close behind him at the top of the steps. Two Trojan soldiers were waiting, eager for a chance at the enemy. One hacked at the warrior's sword arm, and the other lunged for his throat. He fell, blood gouting from his neck. He clattered down the stairway, knocking down the man behind him.

Kalliades grinned at the two defenders. "Pace yourselves," he ordered. "There will be plenty more."

Looking down from the wall, he surveyed the killing ground inside the gates.

The Trojan generals had been planning this day for a long time. If Agamemnon's forces won the freedom of Troy's streets, the only sanctuary for the city's defenders would be the king's palace. Because the best hope lay in keeping the enemy confined at the gate for as long as possible, soldiers had labored throughout the summer to demolish buildings high in the upper city, taking them apart stone by stone. The stones had been used to fill in the roads and alleyways all around the Scaean Gate, blocking them to twice the height of a man.

Fire gullies had been dug all around the circle of open ground inside the gate. They had been filled with anything that would burn: brushwood, the branches and twigs of dead plants, and fuel left from Hektor's funeral pyre. Amphorae filled with the last oil in the city stood ready at points around the killing ground.

As the blood-hungry invaders poured in through the gate, they found themselves trapped in a s.p.a.ce less than forty paces across, with the high walls of stone buildings all around. There were just three ways available to them: up the steps to the battlements on either side of the gate, up the steep stairs inside the Great Tower of Ilion, and straight ahead.

Straight ahead was the only road left unblocked, the stone avenue that led to the heights of the city and Priam's palace. Polites had ordered the entrance to the road barricaded on both sides, with only a central gap remaining for daily traffic.

It was there that defenders were converging from all parts of the city.

Kalliades turned to the battlement door in the wall of the great tower. It would be easy to hold. To get to it the enemy had to climb the steep tower steps in darkness. When they reached the door, they would be emerging from dark into light, through a narrow doorway above a high drop. One steady warrior could defend the door all day, sending enemy after enemy falling to break his bones on the stone floor far below.

There were a hundred men holding that part of the wall. Kalliades knew that not one of them would fall or step back without a fight to the last.

After the long summer of waiting it was almost a relief that this day had arrived. Kalliades looked around him and breathed deeply. The air seemed fresher, the colors clearer. This is what you know, he told himself, the only life you have ever known. If you are not a warrior, what are you, Kalliades?

An enemy warrior appeared at the tower door. A Scamandrian soldier leaped forward and lunged at his chest. The Mykene had his s.h.i.+eld up, but the force of the blow unbalanced him. He fell back into darkness with a cry. Any invaders braving the tower steps would have to pa.s.s a mounting pile of dead and injured men, Kalliades thought with grim satisfaction. In time that would wear on their resolve.

He surveyed the scene below. More and more invaders were pus.h.i.+ng in through the Scaean Gate, eager to get in on the action, and the killing ground was packed with armed men. The Trojan defenders had fallen back, as planned, to the narrowest section of the great road. There just thirty men, Eagles all, were facing the main thrust of the enemy attack. Behind them the gap in the barricade they were defending became narrower as soldiers labored to close it with stones, timber, and rubble.

Kalliades watched with pride as the Eagles battled to hold back the enemy horde. When ordered, one by one the warriors at each end of the line stepped back and slipped through the gap. Finally just three Eagles remained. Kalliades heard the order for them to retreat. Instead, as one, they charged! They were cut down swiftly, but the gap behind them was plugged, and the barricade secured.

Then an order was given. The brushwood was doused with oil, and flaming torches were thrown in from the heights of the surrounding buildings. Within heartbeats the fire had run along the length of the gullies, the oil-fueled flames leaping high and setting alight anything close by. The enemy soldiers nearest to the gullies tried desperately to get back from the flames, but more warriors were pus.h.i.+ng in through the gates behind them. The padded linen kilt of a Kretan soldier caught fire, and within moments he was a screaming, writhing human torch, blundering into his comrades and setting them ablaze. Other men near the fire gullies were set on fire as the leaping flames were blown about by gusty winds.

For a moment it looked as though the flames would jump from man to man, dooming them all. But the disciplined Mykene warriors were not to be panicked. Those armed with lances used them ruthlessly to kill the burning men or hold them at bay until they dropped dying to the ground. Dozens of burned and blackened soldiers lay moaning on the stones, but the fires had been stopped.

On top of the buildings all around the Scaean Gate and on the walls behind the invaders, bowmen were gathering. Arrows started to pepper the enemy troops from all sides, and Kalliades saw several go down, hit in neck, throat, or face.

Satisfied that the south battlements were well defended, Kalliades followed Banokles' footsteps and ran around the wall and down the steps to make his way to the rear of the main barricade. There he found Polites conferring anxiously with General Lucan and Ipheus, the commander of the Eagles.

"Your Eagles are fine warriors," Kalliades told Ipheus. "Would that we had a thousand of them."

"Would that they followed orders," Lucan growled. "Those three at the barricade died needlessly. Three warriors might have made a difference come the last days."

"They were valiant men," Ipheus said quietly.

"I'm not denying it," the old general grunted. "But just as we have learned to conserve food and water and weapons, so we must learn to conserve valor. We have deep reserves of it, but it cannot be thrown away on suicidal adventures."

Polites pointed out grimly, "We hoped the fires would spread and send the enemy fleeing. What next? How long will this barricade hold?"

Kalliades replied, "They have hundreds of men ready to attack it, but on a narrow front. There are thousands more outside the gate waiting to come in. If they keep throwing warriors at it, which they will, eventually they will break through. We can probably hold the barricade into the night, possibly through tomorrow. I cannot see it lasting longer."

He glanced at Lucan, who nodded his agreement. At that moment Banokles arrived at a run. "We need more archers," he demanded. "They're packed like cattle in there. Good bowmen can pick them off like ticks off a dog."

Kalliades admitted, "We are short of bowmen." Then he reluctantly added, "The lady Andromache has been training the Women of the Horse to shoot. Some remain in the city. They might-"

"No!" Polites cut across him with unaccustomed anger. "When the enemy breaks through, those buildings will be cut off and the bowmen in them doomed. I will not put the women in danger."

Kalliades thought that any women still in the city were doomed, anyway, but he responded, "Then I will call on the Thrakian leader Hillas. His archers are the finest in Troy."

In front of them a burly warrior in Kretan armor was the first to cross the fire gully and clamber over the man-high barricade, killing a Trojan soldier with a ma.s.sive ax blow to the head. He was cut down immediately, but two more Kretans followed close behind. One slipped and fell on the s.h.i.+fting timber and stone of the new barricade and was lanced in the side by a Trojan warrior. The other managed a wild sweep with his sword before he was stunned by a blow from a s.h.i.+eld and then half beheaded.

Kalliades turned away to seek out the Thrakians and found the tribesmen waiting mere paces away. They had painted their faces for battle and were armed to the teeth, including the boy-king Periklos.

"This will not last long," Hillas commented as he walked up, waving dismissively at the barricade. "When it falls, we will be waiting. A barricade of flesh and bone will be stronger than one of stone and timber."

"We need more bowmen," Kalliades told him. "On the killing ground the enemy forces are sitting targets for your shafts."

Young Periklos stepped forward. "I and my archers will go where we are needed. Where do you want us?"

Kalliades was torn. If he placed the young king and his Thrakians on a building, they would be trapped when the enemy broke through. But if he put them on the wall, along which they could escape if necessary, there would be no cover from enemy arrows.

"Do not fear for my safety, Kalliades," the young man urged, seeing him hesitate. "Put us where you need us. I will take the same risks as my men."

"How many are you?"

"Just eight bowmen, plus Penthesileia."

Only then did Kalliades realize that one of the archers, standing slightly apart from the men, was the stern-faced woman he had seen at Andromache's first training session. She was wearing a short leather cuira.s.s over her white ankle-length tunic, and a Phrygian bow was slung from one shoulder. In one hand she held two quivers.

"Penthesileia is one of Andromache's handmaidens. She has a wondrous natural skill with a bow," young Periklos explained, flus.h.i.+ng slightly. "She will be a valuable warrior."

Kalliades wondered what the other Thrakians thought of the newcomer. He asked the woman, "Why did you not leave the city while you had the chance?"

"My father, Ursos, gave his life for Troy," the woman told him. Her voice was husky, and he saw she had piercing green eyes under heavy brows. "I can do no less."

Kalliades was reminded suddenly of Piria. Yes, he thought, she would have been here with her bow. He told Periklos, "Go around to the wall to the east of the gate. If you stand well back, you will have some protection from enemy arrows."

The battle for the barricade went on all day and long after sunset. Fortunately for the beleaguered Trojan defenders, the night was moonless and starless. Fighting continued by torchlight for a while, but at last the enemy troops were ordered back to the gate. The Trojans immediately set about rebuilding the defenses that had been pulled down during the day.

When they stood down for the night, Kalliades and Banokles walked to the temple of Athene, where food and water were being handed out. They waited in line in the darkness. Around them exhausted men lay sprawled asleep on the ground. Others sat in small groups, too tired for conversation, staring with deadened eyes.

"Weevil bread and a sip of water," Banokles snorted, dragging off his helm and scratching his sweat-soaked blond hair. "A man can't fight all day on that."

"If Agamemnon had held his troops back for another ten days, we wouldn't even have had weevil bread to fight on."

"That was a good ploy, though, wasn't it? The Trojan Horse. Who wouldn't open the gates for them, riding like that?" Banokles shook his head in admiration.

"I expect Odysseus had a hand in it," Kalliades replied. "He has a cunning mind."

"Do you sometimes forget who you're fighting for?" Banokles asked suddenly.

Kalliades frowned. "No, but I know what you mean. We see Mykene warriors coming over the barricade to be cut down and know some of them were our comrades. If our fate had been slightly different, we'd be the ones on the other side."

"That's not what I mean." Banokles shook his head. "I mean, what what are we fighting for? Troy? There's nothing left of it. The lower town is wrecked, and most of the city. Agamemnon King wants Priam's treasury, they say, but Polites tells us there's nothing left in it. So are we fighting to save the king? He doesn't even know who he is anymore." are we fighting for? Troy? There's nothing left of it. The lower town is wrecked, and most of the city. Agamemnon King wants Priam's treasury, they say, but Polites tells us there's nothing left in it. So are we fighting to save the king? He doesn't even know who he is anymore."

He scratched his head again. "It doesn't matter, not really. We're warriors, you and I, and we've picked our side, and we'll go on fighting until we win or we're killed. I just wondered..." He trailed off.

Kalliades thought about it, standing there in the line for food. They had fled Mykene lands to escape Agamemnon's wrath, and since then they had taken the line of least resistance. They had joined Odysseus on his way to Troy because he had offered them a way off the pirate island. By the fickle will of the G.o.ds they had been there to rescue Andromache when she had been attacked by a.s.sa.s.sins. That had won them a place in Hektor's Trojan Horse. Kalliades smiled to himself. And Banokles' baffling success as a leader of men had rescued them from the jaws of defeat at Carpea, at Dardanos, and outside the walls of Troy.

He shook his head and laughed, the sound echoing across the square and making tired soldiers turn their heads in wonder.

"We are dogged by good luck in battle, you and I," he answered his friend. "Only the G.o.ds know why."

Banokles was silent, and Kalliades turned to look at him. "I would give it all up to have Red back," the big warrior said sadly.

There was a stalemate throughout the night, with the invaders holding the Scaean Gate and the defenders holding the barricade forty paces away. There were jeers and taunts in the darkness from Agamemnon's troops, some of whom had yet to see battle and were raring to go.

With the coming of first light, Kalliades and Banokles took their places behind the barricade. Kalliades checked his breastplate straps, settled his helm more securely, hefted the sword of Argurios, and waited as the blackness gave way to dark gray.

Banokles slashed his swords from side to side, stretching his shoulder muscles, and grunted to his neighbors, "Make room, you sheep s.h.a.ggers!"