While the struggle grew wilder I realized that none of the Trojans were protecting their line of retreat or even thinking about guarding the gate from which they had left their city.
I rushed to Odysseos’ chariot and shouted over the cursing and clanging of the battle, “The gate! They’ve left the gate unprotected!”
Odysseos’ eyes gleamed. He looked out toward the city walls, then back at me. He nodded once.
“To the gate!” he called in a voice that roared across the plain. “To the gate before they can close it.”
Screaming his blood-curdling battle cry, Odysseos fought his way clear of the struggle around Hector’s corpse, followed by two more chariots. I ran after them, slashing my way clear until there was nothing between us and the walls of Troy but empty bare ground.
“To the gate!” I heard another voice bellow, and a chariot clattered past, its horses leaning into their harnesses, nostrils blowing wide, eyes white and bulging.
Within moments Hector’s corpse was forgotten. The battle had turned into a race for the Scaean Gate. Odysseos led the Achaians who were trying to get there before the Trojans could close it. The Trojan army streamed toward it so they could get inside the protection of the city’s walls before the gate was closed and they were cut off.
Achilles was back in his chariot, cutting a bloody path through the Trojans, hacking with his sword until the foot soldiers and chariot-riding noblemen alike gave him a wide berth. Then he snatched the whip from his driver’s hands and lashed his horses into a frenzied gallop toward the city gate.
I saw Odysseos fling a spear into the chest of a Trojan guarding the gate. More Trojans appeared in the open gateway, graybeards and young boys armed with light throwing javelins and bronze swords. From up on the battlements that flanked the gate others were firing arrows and hurling stones. Odysseos was forced to back away.
But not Achilles. His long hair streaming in the wind, he drove straight for the gate, oblivious to the bombardment from above. The rear guard scattered before him, ducking behind the massive wooden doors. From behind, someone started to push them closed. Seeing that the gap between the two doors was too small for his chariot to pass through, Achilles jumped to the ground, his bloodstained great spear in his hands, and charged at the gate while his charioteer tried to regain control of the frightened horses. Achilles met a hedgehog of spear points but dived at them headlong, jabbing and slashing two-handed with his own spear.
Odysseos and another chariot-mounted warrior rushed up to help him, their great shields strapped to their backs to protect them from neck to heel from the stones and arrows being aimed at them from above. I saw the main mass of the Trojans not far behind us, a wild tangled melee battling with the rest of the Achaians, fighting to reach the protection of the city’s walls.
I pushed my way between Achilles and Odysseos’ chariot, hacking with my sword at the spears sticking out from the gap between the doors. I grabbed a spear with my right hand and pulled it out of the hands of the frightened boy who had been holding it. Flinging it to the ground, I reached for another. I grasped the spear and pulled on it, dragging the graybeard holding it until he was within reach of my sword. He saw the blow coming and released the spear, raising his arms over his head and screaming, as if that would protect him. I hesitated for just a heartbeat, but that was long enough for the old man to drop to his knees and scrabble away from me.
A teenager thrust his spear at me. I dodged it and swung at the youth, but there was little purpose in my swing except to scare him off. He backed away slightly, then came at me again. I did not give him a second chance.
The struggle at the gate seemed to go on endlessly, although common sense tells me it took only a few moments. The rest of the Trojans came up, still battling furiously with the main body of the Achaians. Chariots and foot soldiers hacked and slashed and cursed and screamed their final cries in that narrow passage between the walls that flanked the Scaean Gate. Dust and blood and arrows and stones filled the deadly air. The Trojans were fighting for their lives, desperately trying to get inside the gate, just as the Achaians had been trying to escape Hector’s spear only a few days earlier.
Despite our efforts the Trojans still held the gate ajar and kept us from entering it. Sometimes a few determined men can keep an army at bay, and the Trojan rear guard at the gate had the determination born of sheer desperation. They knew that if we forced that gate their city was finished: their lives, their families, their homes would be wiped out. So they held us at bay, new men and boys taking the place of those we killed, while the main body of their army slipped through the open doors, fighting as they retreated to safety.
Then I saw the blow that ended the battle. Still fighting at the narrow entrance to the gate, I had to turn to face the Trojan warriors who were battling their way to the doors in their effort to get inside the city’s walls. I saw Achilles, his eyes burning with battle fury, his mouth open with wild laughter, hacking any Trojan who dared to come within his spear’s reach. Up on the battlements one of the Trojans leaned out with a bow in his hands and fired an arrow toward Achilles’ unprotected back.
As if in a dream, a nightmare, I shouted a warning that was drowned out in the cursing, howling uproar of the battle. I pushed past a halfdozen furiously battling men to reach Achilles as the arrow streaked toward its target. I managed to get a hand on his shoulder and push him out of the way.
Almost.
The arrow struck him on the back of his leg, slightly above the heel. Achilles went down with a high-pitched scream of pain.
9
For an instant the world seemed to stop.
Achilles, the seemingly invulnerable champion, was down in the dust, writhing in pain, an arrow jutting out from the back of his left ankle.
I stood over him and took off the head of the first Trojan who came at him with a single swipe of my sword. Odysseos and another Achaian lord jumped down from their chariots to join me. Suddenly the battle had changed its entire purpose and direction. We were no longer trying to force the Scaean Gate; we were fighting to keep Achilles alive and get him back to our camp.
Slowly we withdrew, and in truth, after a few moments the Trojans seemed glad enough to let us go. They streamed back inside their gate and swung its massive doors shut. I picked up Achilles in my arms while Odysseos and the others formed a guard around us and we headed back to the camp.
For all his ferocity and strength, he was as light as a child. His Myrmidones surrounded us, staring at their wounded prince with shocked, disbelieving eyes. Achilles’ unhandsome face was bathed with sweat, but he kept his lips clamped together in a painful white line as I carried him past the huge windblown oak just beyond the Scaean Gate.
“I was offered a choice,” he muttered, his teeth clenched with pain, “between long life and glory. I chose glory.”
“It’s not a serious wound,” I said.
“The gods will decide how serious it is,” he replied, in a voice so faint I could hardly hear him.
Halfway across the body-littered plain six men ran up to meet us, puffing hard, carrying a stretcher of thongs laced across a wooden frame. I laid Achilles on it as gently as I could. He grimaced, but did not cry out or complain.
Odysseos put a heavy hand on my shoulder. “You saved his life.”
“You saw?”
“I did. That arrow was meant for his heart.”
“How bad a wound do you think it is?”
“I’ve seen worse,” said Odysseos. “Still, he’ll be out of action for many days.”
We trudged across the blood-soaked plain side by side. The wind was coming off the water again, blowing dust in our faces, forcing us to squint as we walked toward the camp. Every muscle in my body ached. Blood was crusted on my sword arm, my legs, spattered across my leather jerkin. I could see swarms of flies already crawling over the dead bodies that littered the field.
“You fought well,” Odysseos said. “For a few moments there I thought we would force the gate and enter
