that no hostilities would resume until the morning. True, the fighting would start with the sun’s rise. But were they fools enough to post no lookouts through the night?

The ground was rising now, and what had seemed like a gentle slope felt like a steep cliff. We all gripped the ropes in our hands and put our backs into it, trying not to grunt or cry out with the pain. I looked across from where I was hauling and saw Magro, his face contorted with the effort, his booted heels digging into the mist-slippery grass, straining like a common laborer, just as all the rest of us were.

At last we reached the base of the wall and huddled there, panting. I sent Poletes scampering to the corner where the wall turned, to watch the eastern sky and tell me when it started to turn gray with the first hint of dawn. We all sat sprawled on the damp ground, letting our aching muscles relax until the moment for action came. The tower lay lengthwise along the ground, waiting to be pulled up to its vertical position. I sat with my back against the wall of Troy and counted the time by listening to my heartbeat.

I heard a rooster crow from inside the city, and then another. Where is Poletes? I wondered. Has he fallen asleep or been found by a Trojan sentry?

Just as I was getting to my feet the old storyteller scuttled back through the mist to me.

“The eastern sky is still dark, except for the first touch of faint light between the mountains. Soon the sky will turn milky white, then as rosy as a flower.”

“Odysseos and his troops will be starting out from the camp,” I whispered. “Time to get the tower up.”

The fog was thinning slightly as we pushed on the poles that raised the tower to its vertical position. It was even heavier than it looked, because of the horse hides and weapons we had lashed to its platforms. Teams of men braced the tower with more poles as it rose. There was no way we could muffle the noise of the creaking and our own gasping, grunting exertions. It seemed to take forever to get the thing standing straight, although only a few strenuous moments had passed.

Still, just as the tower tipped over and thumped ponderously against the wall in its final position, I heard voices calling confusedly from up atop the battlements.

I turned to Poletes. “Run back to Odysseos and tell him we’re ready. He’s to come as fast as he can!”

The plan was for Odysseos and a picked squad of fifty of his Ithacans to make their way across the plain on foot, because chariots would have been too noisy. I began to wonder if that had been the smartest approach.

Someone was shouting from inside the walls now and I saw a head appear over the battlements, silhouetted for a brief instant against the graying sky.

I pulled out my sword and swung up onto the ladder that led to the top of the tower. Magro was barely a step behind me, and the rest of my squad started swarming up the tower’s sides, unrolling the horse hides we had placed to protect the tower’s sides against spears and arrows.

“What is it?” I heard a boy’s frightened high-pitched voice from atop the wall.

“It’s a giant horse!” a fear-stricken voice answered. “With warriors inside it!”

11

I reached the topmost platform of the tower, sword in hand. Our calculations had been almost perfect. The platform reared a shin’s length or so higher than the wall’s battlements. Without hesitation I jumped down onto the stone parapet and from there onto the wooden platform behind it.

A pair of stunned Trojan youths stood barely a sword’s length before me, their mouths agape, eyes bulging, long spears in their trembling hands. I rushed at them and cut the closer one nearly in half with a swing of my sword. The other dropped his spear and, screaming, jumped off the platform into the dark street below.

The sky was brightening. The city seemed asleep, but across the angle of the wall I could see another sentry on the platform, his long spear outlined against the gray-pink of dawn. Instead of charging at us he turned and ran toward the square stone tower that flanked the Scaean Gate.

“He’ll alarm the guard,” I said to Magro. “They’ll all be at us in a few moments.”

Magro nodded, his battle-hardened face showing neither fear nor anticipation.

It was now a race between Odysseos’ Ithacans and the Trojan guards. We had won a foothold inside the walls; now our job was to hold it. As my men swiftly broke out the spears and shields that we had roped to the tower’s timbers, I glanced over the parapet. Fog and darkness still shrouded the plain. I couldn’t see Odysseos and his men in the shadows—if they were there.

A dozen Trojan guards spilled out of the watchtower, and I saw even more Trojans rushing toward us from the far side of the tower, running along the south wall, spears leveled. The battle was on.

My men had faced spears before, and they knew how to use their own. We formed a defensive wall by locking our shields together and put out a bristling hedgehog front with our long spears. I took a spear and butted my shield next to Magro’s, at the end of our line. I could feel my heart pounding; my palms were slippery with sweat.

The Trojans attacked us with reckless fury, practically leaping on our spear points. They fought to save their city. We fought for our lives. There was no way for us to retreat without being butchered. We either held our foothold on the wall or we died.

Our shield wall buckled under their ferocious attack. We were forced a step back, then another. A heavy bronze spear point crashed over the top of my shield, missing my ear by a finger’s width. I thrust my spear into the belly of that man: his face went from shocked surprise to the final agony of death in the flash of a heartbeat.

More Trojans were scrambling up the ladders to the platform, strapping armor over their nightclothes as they ran. These were the nobility, the cream of their fighting strength. I could tell from the gaudy plumes of the helmets they were putting on and the burnished bronze of their breastplates glinting in the light of the new day.

Farther off, archers were kneeling as they fired flaming arrows at our tower. Others fired at us. An arrow chunked into my shield. Another hit Harkan, two men down from me, in his leg. He staggered backward and let his shield drop. Instantly a Trojan drove his spear through Harkan’s unprotected chest.

Their archers began lofting their shots to get over our wall of shields. Flaming arrows fell among us. Men screamed and fell to the wooden flooring, their clothes and flesh on fire.

The barrage of arrows would quickly break our shield wall and what was left of my men would go down under the weight of Trojan numbers. I felt a burning fury rise inside me, a rage against those archers who knelt a safe distance away and tried to kill us at their leisure. Call it battle fury, call it bloodlust, I felt a flame of hatred and rage that I had never experienced before.

“Hold here,” I shouted to Magro. Before he could do more than grunt I drove forward, surprising the Trojans in front of me. Grasping my spear in two hands, level with the floor, I pushed four of them off their feet and slipped between the others, dodging their clumsy thrusts as they half-turned to slash at me. I killed one of them; Magro and the rest of my men pushed forward and killed several more. The Trojans quickly turned back to face my advancing men.

I dashed toward the archers. Most of them turned and ran, although two of them stood their ground and managed to get off a pair of arrows at me. They thudded into my shield as I ran at the archers. I caught the first one on my spear, a lad too young to have more than the wisp of a beard. His companion dropped his bow and tried to pull out the dagger at his waist but I knocked him spinning with a swipe of my shield. He toppled off the platform screaming to the street below.

The other archers had retreated down the platform that ran along the battlements. The men of my squad were fighting the Trojan guards who had rushed them. For the span of a heartbeat I was alone. But only for that long. The Trojan nobles were charging along the platform toward me, a dozen of them, with more climbing the ladder behind them.

I hefted my long spear in one hand and threw it at the nearest man. Its heavy weight drove it completely through his shield and into his chest. He staggered backward into the arms of his two nearest companions.

I threw my shield at them to slow them down further, then picked up the bow from the archer I had slain. It was a beautiful, gracefully curved thing of horn and smooth-polished wood. But I had no time to admire its workmanship. I fired every arrow in the dead youth’s quiver as rapidly as I could, forcing the nobles to cower behind their body-length shields, holding them at bay for a precious few moments more.

Вы читаете The Hittite
Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату