Steep Wilusiya (Age of Bronze) (18 page)

"Where are you going?" an archer called down from the wall, guarding the entrance.

"To fight!" Paqúr called up.  "If you want to take areté from an Ak'áyan today, join us."

"I will be right behind you," the bowman answered eagerly and several of his companions followed him to the wooden staircase in the western tower.

aaa

Beside his hut, Ak'illéyu lay sprawled in the dirt, a wine cup in his hand, a poppy flask beside him.  He stared up blankly at the darkening sky, unaware of the evening bustle about him.  From time to time, he moaned or cursed the gods, then lay still again.  Men at their hearths all around him carried water and wood to their campfires, preparing their meal.  They gave their commander a wide berth.  Although they did not dare look directly at their leader, for fear of meeting his gaze and drawing his anger, they found excuses to glance in his direction from time to time.  What they saw did not please them.  The man was lost in grief again.  All the elaborate rites had still not appeased him.  'Iqodámeya silently served her lord his portion of gruel and fish, only to carry it away again later, uneaten.  The T'eshalíyans noted that and gathered close to the rampart's gateway to discuss their prince and their own grim fate.

In a hushed voice, Automédon told the others, "We should take him home with us, even if we have to tie him up.  He is useless here.  Our only hope lies in king Péleyu.  That old man would not throw away our lives in a fit of rage.  He, at least, will know what to do with his mad son."  No one argued.  But no one made a move.  Their wánaks was a formidable warrior.  Great Aíwaks might well be the only man who could take him.  But the giant served Agamémnon.  And a fight between the overlord's big qasiléyu and T'eshalíya's prince would likely ignite a war among the Ak'áyans.

As the T'eshalíyans muttered their fears to each other and their prince lay before his hut, 'Iqodámeya spied movement in the fields before Tróya.  She crept toward the open gateway in the camp's earthen wall, stealing anxious glances back at Ak'illéyu as she went.  In her mind, she heard Wíp'iya's voice, as the heavy-set woman had spoken before the first battle before Tróya.

"Once you have slept with a man, his mark is on you," Wíp'iya had told her fellow captives, her voice firm, almost passionless.  "In the eyes of all other men, you have lost something.  Even if you could return home, your own countrymen would despise you because of the areté you lost on Ak'áyan sheepskins.  So accept your fate.  Submit to your captor.  Make the best of it, try to please him, and you may be rewarded with light duties in his fortress.  Otherwise, you will still be carried across the Inner Sea, but you will end your days doing hard labor in the flax fields, alone, unloved, forgotten."

The approaching Assúwans were nearing the Sqámandro River and 'Iqodámeya could make out the characteristic felt hats of the Lúkiyans.  With a hand over her womb, she took another step toward the opening in the wall.  Intent on the scene in the distance, she bumped into Automédon, making him drop a painted stirrup jug.  The vessel fell with a crash and shattered on the hard ground, spilling olive oil newly bought from the visiting islanders.  The T'eshalíyan qasiléyu cursed the captive, "To 'Aidé with you, woman!  Watch where you are going!"

Ak'illéyu sat up abruptly at the noise. "What are you doing?" he bellowed,  and clambered to his feet unsteadily, spilling his wine.  "'Iqodámeya!  Where are you going?"

The men in the T'eshalíyan section of camp fell silent.  They remembered sudden, urgent business matters among their distant kinsmen, at hearths on the far side of the encampment, leaving 'Iqodámeya to face their leader alone.  She trembled but did not run from his threatening advance.  "My wánaks," she began, but the hostile look in his eyes silenced her.

"I should not have listened to you," the prince said, glowering at her through his eyebrows.  "I should not have relinquished Qántili's corpse."  He stepped toward her, threatening with hard fists.  "You have betrayed me…"

She forced herself to turn her eyes from his face and toward the north.  Swallowing with difficulty, she gulped, "Look, wánaks, spears!  The Lúkiyans are coming this way."

With a suddenness that frightened the captive woman, Ak'illéyu ran out the gate of the encampment and stared toward the river.  There he saw the Assúwans wading waist deep, their spears and shields held above their heads.  "Alalá!" the T'eshalíyan prince called out, giving the battle cry as he raced back to his hut for his spear.

The encampment exploded into action, men taking up their weapons and armor, shouting to each other in anger, fear, and confusion.  Ak'illéyu was among the first Ak'áyans out of the camp, leading the warriors against their oncoming enemies.  Alongside him, T'eshalíyans and other P'ilístas, Argives and their fellow Zeyugelátes rushed forward, mingled without regard for nation or kinship.

Two threatening lines of men drew up, facing each other close to the Sqámandro's waters.  They pounded with their spear-shafts on the wooden rims of their shields.  Ak'áyans cried out, "Díwo!" as they struck their circular ox-hides.  "Tarqún!" returned the Lúkiyans, invoking their god of storm to the rhythm of their drumming.  "Run while you have a chance, little boys!" mocked the Wilúsiyans, shaking their long shields, each a rough figure-eight in shape.  "Poseidáon will trample you into the dirt."

"Owái," Odushéyu bellowed with pretended fear, taking a step in front of the other Ak'áyans.  "Look at the fierce lambs and kids before us."  Behind and beside the stocky wánaks, other men mimicked the bleating of goats and sheep and waved their spears above their heads.

As each side hesitated to be the first to strike a blow, Ak'illéyu and Ainyáh stepped forward into the empty stretch between the armies.  They hurled insults at each other, each accusing his enemy of kinship with domestic animals, boasting of his own lineage.  Ak'illéyu called, "Prepare to die, son of mongrels!  I am the son of the wánasha of gods!"  He raised his spear in thrusting position, stabbing the air with quick, dramatic movements.

"Diwiyána!" cried the other T'eshalíyans, beating their round shields with their spears.  Around them the other P'ilístas and Zeugelátes did the same, trilling the warcry, "Alalá!"  Still the Ak'áyans, including their champion, hesitated to close the gap between the armies.

"I am the son of the goddess of war!" Ainyáh hurled back, wielding his own spear in the same way.  "Say goodbye to the cow who bore you!"

On either side, his Kanaqániyans clashed their spears together and cried, "Astárt!"

"Enough of this playing!" the Lúkiyan king shouted, and as he spoke Sharpaduwánna jumped forward despite his injured leg.  In the blink of an eye he drove his spear against Ak'illéyu's untouched shield.  With that act, the two armies fell to fighting, thrusting heavy lances into the undefended spaces above and beside ox-hide shields.  The first man fell, a Lúkiyan, curling up on the bronze blade that pierced his abdomen, screaming shrilly at war's most painful wound.  An Ak'áyan bent down to possess the curved sword hanging at the dying man's side.  Into his undefended backside a spear darted, ending the killer's quest for the shining bronze blade.  He collapsed on his still-writhing victim, his backbone severed.  Sharpaduwánna exulted over his first kill, calling on the storm god of Assúwa.  But there was no time to celebrate, as a bristling wave of Ak'áyan spears came up around him to prevent him from beheading or despoiling his prey.  With his lance still buried in bone and flesh, the Lúkiyan ruler drew the sword at his side and slashed at the unprotected limbs of his enemies.  With screams of anguish and shouts of triumph, Lúkiyans and Wilúsiyans met and mingled with Ak'áyans, spattering each other with blood.

Behind the cluster of men fighting hand to hand, Paqúr gathered his archers in a line.  "There!" the prince directed them, "Send your arrows against the rampart gate."  Flight after flight of deadly shafts rained down on the steady stream of Ak'áyans running toward them from the encampment.  The Tróyan's command had its desired effect.  Only a portion of Ak'áiwiya's army had come toward the river at Ak'illéyu's first cry.  Without their full armor or all their weapons, feather-crowned P'ilístas and leather- or bronze-capped Zeugelátes fell quickly to the well prepared Lúkiyans thirst for revenge.  Paqúr's bowmen mowed down their enemies as the narrowness of their gate forced them into a small area.  Wilúsiyan barbs put a final end to Ak'áyans by the dozen before their bronze could taste Assúwan blood.  Like waves in a storm on a winter sea, Lúkiya's fierce warriors swept across the field to the very gate of the Ak'áyan camp, leaving behind them great numbers of bodies littering the southern bank of the Sqámandro River.  Only their lust for bronze slowed Sharpaduwánna's men.  If they had not taken time to take the swords and spears of the dead and mortally wounded, the Lúkiyans would have been digging earth from the encampment's rampart wall with their spears before the archers had depleted their store of arrows.

But as the men of Assúwa approached the rampart, the deadly rain thinned, as they ran out of ammunition.  Paqúr sent his bowmen forward in the Lúkiyans' wake, urging them to collect every arrow from the ground or from the fallen.  The brief interlude was all the Assúwans' enemies needed.  The bulk of Ak'áiwiya's soldiers abandoned the gate, with its dam of corpses and clambered over the whole north face of their rampart wall.  Mesheníyans and Lakedaimóniyans had taken the time to don all the armor they possessed and to arm themselves fully.  Aroused by the sights and sounds of their fellow countrymen dying, they leaped down upon their foes and beat back the Lúkiyan advance, despite the best efforts of Sharpaduwánna's men.  Those men, after all, had paused, from time to time in their progress, to take whatever metal objects attracted their eyes from the men they had downed.  They now paid for that slowness with their lives.

In all the slaughter, Tróya's princes avoided death.  Lupákki stood with Ainyáh and the Kanaqániyans, holding their ground when others began to retreat around them.  As his fallen brother had formerly done, Paqúr roamed the back of his Wilúsiyan lines, rallying his men when they seemed on the verge of turning back toward the riverbank.  "Do not give up now," he called to them.  "The sea god is with us.  Listen to his voice.  Remember your areté."  When honor's allure faded, Paqúr threatened the warriors with his spear.  "Any man who turns is food for crows!"

Feeling the ground beginning to vibrate beneath their feet, the battle-dazed men thought they saw the Divine Horse himself, tearing from this place to that on the field at mind-numbing speed.  They felt the power in his hooves that pounded the earth, and heard the whistling of the wind created by his passing.  Scattered randomly over the battle ground, the Assúwans came together around the stalwart Ainyáh.  Closing ranks, the Tróyans and their allies again pushed toward the Ak'áyans' walls, fighting hand to hand, pitting muscle against muscle and bronze blade against bronze.

But new cries of "Díwo!" rose from the sons of Diwiyána as reinforcements came from the camp, men with less serious wounds responding more slowly to the summons to do battle.  Aíwaks, Idómeneyu, and Odushéyu shouted encouragement to their fellows.  "The wánaks of the gods is with us!  Hear his thunder!  He will blast the Assúwans with his thunderbolt for breaking the truce!"  Again, Ak'áiwiya's manhood surged northward toward the Sqámandro’s turbid waters.  The Assúwans gave ground reluctantly.  But the retreat did not become a rout.  Little by little, they slowed the Ak'áyan advance and turned the tide again.  Back and forth the two armies pushed each other, until the fields between the encampment and the riverbank were washed in blood.

            "I hear the distant sound of Díwo's battle-axe," Qálki told Diwoméde as the young man limped from his hut, spear in one hand, a flask of poppy-tinged wine in the other.  "He is angry because we burned the dead in the Wilúsiyan manner.  His lightning bolt may strike our ships."