The Hittite

land.

“We are Hatti soldiers, from far to the east. We seek the city of Troy.”

It took some while, but gradually I made them understand that we meant them no harm. The young spearmen told me that Troy was under siege by a huge army of Achaians, kings and princes of a hundred cities from the far side of the Aegean, or so he claimed. They themselves were part of the besieging Achaian army, sent out to guard this pitiful band of foragers who were gathering firewood. A pretty poor army, I thought.

“You can’t enter the city,” the young leader of the spearmen told me. “The High King Agamemnon would never allow trained warriors to pass through his lines.”

We had arrived in the middle of a war. Where my wife and sons might be was anyone’s guess.

“Then I must see this Agamemnon,” I said.

“See the High King?” the spearman’s voice squeaked with awe.

“Yes, if he is the leader of your army.”

“But he’s the High King! He speaks only to princes and other kings.”

“He will want to speak to me,” I said, with a confidence I did not truly feel. “I am an officer in the army of the Hatti. I can be of great service to him.”

In truth, the spearman was little more than a beardless youth. The thought of going before his High King seemed to fill him with terror. At last he called one of the wood-loaders, a scrawny, knobby-kneed old man with a mangy, unkempt dirty gray beard and bald head shining with sweat.

“Poletes,” the youth commanded, his voice still fluttering slightly, “take these men to the camp and turn them over to the High King’s lieutenant.”

The old man nodded eagerly, glad to be free of his heavy work, and led us down toward the slow-flowing river.

“That’s the plain of Ilios,” said Poletes, pointing to the other side of the river as we followed its winding bank.

His voice was surprisingly strong and deep for such a wizened old gnome. His face was hollow-cheeked beneath its grime, with eyes that bulged like a frog’s. He wore nothing but a filthy rag around his loins. Even in the fading light of the dying day I could see his ribs and the bumps of his spine poking out beneath his nut-brown skin. There were welts from a whip across his back, too.

“You are Hittites?” he asked me as we walked slowly along.

“Yes,” I said. “In our tongue we call ourselves Hatti.”

“The Hittites are a powerful empire,” he said, surprising me with the knowledge. “Have you come to aid Troy? How many of your army are with you?”

I decided it was best to tell him nothing. “Such things I will tell your High King.”

“Ah. Of course. No sense blabbing to a thes.”

That word I did not know. “Where are you from?” I asked.

“Argos. And I wish I were there now, instead of toiling like a dog here in this doomed place.”

“What brought you here?”

He looked up at me and scratched his bald pate. “Not what. Who. Agamemnon’s haughty wife, that’s who. Clytemnestra, who is even more faithless than her sister, Helen.”

It must have been obvious to him that I did not understand, but he went right on, hardly drawing a breath.

“A storyteller am I, and happy I was to spend my days in the agora, spinning tales of gods and heroes and watching the faces of the people as I talked. Especially the children, with their big eyes. But this war has put an end to my storytelling.”

“How so?”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his grimy hand. “My lord Agamemnon may need more warriors, but his faithless wife wants thetes.”

“Slaves?”

“Hah! Worse off than slaves. Far worse,” Poletes grumbled. He jerked a thumb back toward the men we had left; I could still hear the distant chunking of their axes. “Look at us! Homeless and hopeless. At least a slave has a master to depend upon. A slave belongs to someone; he is a member of a house hold. A thes belongs to no one and nothing; he is landless, homeless, cut off from everything except sorrow and hunger.”

“But weren’t you a member of a house hold in Argos?” I asked.

He bowed his head and squeezed his eyes shut as if to block out a painful memory.

“A house hold, yes,” he said, his voice dropping low. “Until Queen Clytemnestra’s men booted me out of the city for repeating what every stray dog and alley cat in Argos was saying—that the queen has taken a lover while her royal husband is here fighting at Troy’s walls.”

I raised my hand to stop our march. Even though the sun was setting, the day was still broiling hot and the river looked cool and inviting. I sat down on the grassy bank and, leaning far over, scooped up a helmetful of clear water. The men did the same. A few even splashed into the river, laughing and thrashing about like boys.

I drank my fill while Poletes slid down the slippery grass into the water and cupped his hands to drink. Watching the brown filth eddying from his legs, I was glad that I had filled my helmet first.

“Well,” I said, wiping sweat from my brow, “at least the queen’s men didn’t kill you.”

“Better if they had,” Poletes replied grimly. “I would be dead and in Hades and that would be the end of it. Instead I’m here, toiling like a jackass, working for wages.”

“That’s something, anyway,” I said.

His frog’s eyes snapped at me. Still standing shanks-deep in the river, he grabbed at the soiled little purse tied to his waist and opened its mouth enough for me to peer in. A handful of dried lentils.

“My wages,” he said bitterly.

“That is your payment?”

“For the day’s work. Show me a thes with coin in his purse and I’ll show you a sneak thief.”

I shook my head, then got to my feet and motioned my men to do the same.

“Lower than a slave, that’s what I am,” Poletes grumbled as I lent him my arm and hauled him out of the water. “Vermin under their feet. They treat their dogs better. They’ll work me to death and let my bones rot where I fall.”

7

Muttering and complaining all the way, Poletes led us across a ford in the river and toward the camp of the Achaians, which stretched along the sandy shore of the restless sea. It was protected by an earthen rampart twice the height of a grown man running parallel to the shoreline. I saw sharpened stakes planted here and there along its summit. In front of the rampart was a deep ditch, with more stakes studding its bottom. There was a packed sandy rampway that led up to an opening in the rampart, which was protected by a wooden gate that stood wide open, defended by a handful of lounging spearmen. If this is a sample of Acha-ian discipline, I thought, a maniple or two of Hatti soldiers could take this gate and probably the whole camp with it.

We trudged up the ramp and through the open gate, unchallenged by the men who were supposed to be guarding it. Once inside the gate, I saw that what they called a camp looked more like a crowded, bustling noisy village than a military base, and smelled like a barn despite the breeze coming off the sea. People milled about, all of them talking at once, it seemed, at the top of their lungs. There was no hint of military or ganization or discipline among these Achaians.

They had pulled their long, pitch-blackened boats up onto the sandy beach and raised tents and even sizable huts of wood next to them. Between the boats stood roped-off corrals where horses neighed and stamped, and makeshift pens of slatted wood for stinking goats and sheep that bleated and shitted endlessly. Noise and filth were everywhere; the stench almost gagged me at first.

It grew chilly as the sun sank below the flat horizon of the dark blue sea. They have been here for some