The Hittite (5 page)

Bronze armor glittered in the sun as the chariots clattered through the gate and arrayed themselves in line abreast. Most were pulled by two horses, though a few had teams of four. The horses neighed and stamped their hooves nervously, as if they sensed the mayhem that was in store. I counted seventy-nine chariots, a pitifully small number compared to the assemblages of the army of the Hatti.

I myself had seen more than a thousand chariots assembled before the walls of Babylon. My grandfather claimed there were ten thousand at the battle of Megiddo.

Each of the Achaian chariots bore two men, one handling the horses, the other armed with several spears of different weights and lengths. The longest were more than twice the height of a warrior, even in his bronze helmet with its plume of brightly dyed horse hair.

Both men in each chariot wore bronze breastplates, helmets and arm guards. I could not see their legs but I guessed that they were sheathed in greaves, as well. Most of the chariot drivers carried small round targes strapped to their left forearms. Each of the warriors held a heavy hourglass-shaped shield that was nearly as tall as he was, covering him from chin to ankles. I caught the glitter of gold and silver on the hilts of their swords. Many of the charioteers had bows slung across their backs or hooked against the chariot rail.

A huge shout went up as the last chariot passed through the gate and
down the heavily trodden rampway that crossed the trench. The four horses pulling it were magnificent matched blacks, glossy and sleek. The warrior standing in it seemed stockier than most of the others, his armor filigreed with gold inlays.

“That’s the High King!” said Poletes over the roar of the shouting men. “That’s Agamemnon.”

“Is Achilles with them?” I asked.

“No. But that giant over on the left is Great Ajax,” he pointed, excited despite himself. “There’s Odysseos, and—”

An echoing roar reached us from the battlements of Troy. A cloud of dust showed that a contingent of chariots was filing out of the large gate on the right side of the city’s wall and winding its way down the incline that led to the plain before us.

Foot soldiers were hurrying out of our makeshift gate now, menatarms bearing bows, slings, axes, cudgels. Down the ramp of packed sand they hurried and spread out behind the line of Achaian chariots. A few of them wore armor or chain mail, but most of them had nothing more protective than leather vests, some studded with bronze pieces. Squinting into the bright sunshine, I saw that Trojan footmen were lining up behind their chariots. None of the troops marched in order, on either side; they simply ambled out like a horde of undisciplined rabble.

The two armies assembled themselves facing each other on the windswept plain. It grew strangely quiet. The clouds of dust the chariots had raised eddied away on the breeze coming from the sea. The river we had forded the day before formed a natural boundary to the battlefield on our right, while a smaller meandering stream defined the left flank. Beyond their far banks the ground on both sides was green with tussocks of long-bladed grass, but the battlefield itself had been worn bare by chariot wheels and the tramping of horses and warriors.

For nearly the time it took to eat a meal, nothing much happened. The armies stood facing each other. The sun climbed higher in the nearly cloudless sky. Horses whinnied nervously. Heralds went out from each side and spoke with each other while the wind gusted in our ears.

“None of the heroes are challenging each other to single combat this
day,” explained Poletes. “The heralds are exchanging offers of peace, which each side will disdainfully refuse.”

“They do this every day?”

He nodded. “Unless it rains.”

A question popped into my mind. “Why are they fighting? What’s the reason for this war?”

Poletes turned his wizened face to me. “Ah, Hittite, that is a good question. They say they are fighting over Helen, the wife of Menalaos, and it’s true that Prince Paris abducted her from Sparta while her husband’s back was turned. Whether she came with him willingly or not, only the gods know.”

“Who is Prince Paris?”

“King Priam’s youn gest son. Sometimes he is called Alexandros.” Poletes broke into a chuckle. “A few days ago Menalaos, the lawful husband of Helen, challenged him to single combat, but Paris ran away. He hid behind his foot soldiers! Can you believe that?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I remained silent.

“Menalaos is King of Sparta and Agamemnon’s brother,” Poletes went on, his voice dropping lower, as if he did not want the others to overhear. “The High King would love to smash Troy flat. That would give him clear sailing through the Dardanelles into the Sea of Black Waters.”

“Is that important?”

“Gold, my boy,” Poletes whispered. “Not merely the yellow metal that kings adorn themselves with, but the golden grain that grows by the far shores of that sea. A land awash in grain. But no one can pass through the straits and get at it unless they pay a tribute to Troy.”

I was beginning to understand the reason behind this war.

“Paris was on a mission of peace to Mycenae, to arrange a new trade agreement between his father, Priam, and High King Agamemnon. He stopped off at Sparta and ended up abducting the beautiful Helen instead. That was all the excuse Agamemnon needed. If he can conquer Troy he can have free access to the riches of the lands beyond the Dardanelles.”

“Why don’t the Trojans simply return Helen to her rightful husband? That would put an end to this war, wouldn’t it?”

Poletes smiled knowingly. “It would indeed. But you have not seen the golden-haired Helen.”

“Have you?”

He shook his head sadly. “No. But everyone who has agrees that she is the most beautiful woman in the world. Aphrodite’s child, they claim.”

“No woman could be so important that men would fight a war over her.” But I remembered that the night before I was almost willing to attack Agamemnon’s lodge to seize my wife and sons. Almost.

“Perhaps so, Hittite,” said Poletes. “Helen is merely an excuse for Agamemnon’s greed. But the Trojans won’t give her up and here we are.”

A series of bugle blasts erupted on the plain before us.

“Now it begins,” Poletes said, suddenly grim, hard-eyed. “Now the fools rush to the slaughter once again.”

Standing beside Poletes atop the rampart I watched as the charioteers cracked their whips and the horses bolted forward, carrying Achaians and Trojans eagerly toward each other.

I focused my attention on the chariot nearest us and saw the warrior in it setting his sandaled feet in a pair of raised sockets, to give him a firm base for using his spears. He held his body-length shield before him on his left arm and with his free hand plucked one of the lighter, shorter spears from the handful rattling in their holder.

“Diomedes,” said Poletes, before I asked. “Prince of Argos. A fine young man.”

Shrieks and screams filled the air as each warrior shouted out his battle cry. The horses pounded madly across the field, eyes bulging, nostrils wide.

The chariot approaching Diomedes swerved suddenly and the warrior in it hurled his spear. It sailed harmlessly past the prince of Argos. Diomedes threw his spear and hit the rump of the farthest of his opponent’s four horses. The horse whickered and reared, throwing the other three so far off stride that the chariot slewed wildly, tumbling the warrior onto the dusty ground. The charioteer ducked behind the chariot’s siding.

Other combats were turning the worn-bare battlefield into a vast cloud of dust, with chariots wheeling, spears hurtling through the air,
shrill battle cries and shouted curses ringing everywhere. The foot soldiers seemed to be holding back, letting the noblemen fight their single encounters for the first few moments of the battle.

I could see no order to the battle, no judgment or tactics. The nobles in their chariots merely rushed into single combat against the enemy’s chariot-riding noblemen. No formations of chariots, no organized plan of attack, nothing but chaos.

One voice pierced all the others, a weird screaming cry like a seagull gone mad with frenzy.

“The battle cry of Odysseos,” Poletes said. “You can always hear the King of Ithaca above all the others.”

I was still concentrating on Diomedes, eager to learn how these Achaians fought their battles. As his opponent sprawled in the dust, his charioteer reined in his team and Diomedes hopped down to the ground, two spears gripped in his left hand, his massive figure-eight shield bumping against his helmet and greaves.

“A lesser man would have speared his foe from the chariot,” said Poletes admiringly. “Diomedes is a true nobleman. Would that he had been in Argos when Clytemnestra’s men put me out!”

Diomedes approached the fallen warrior, who clambered back to his feet and held his shield before him while drawing his long sword from its sheath. The prince of Argos took his longest and heaviest spear in his right hand and shook it menacingly. I could not hear what the two men were saying to each other, but they shouted something back and forth.

Suddenly both men dropped their weapons and shields, rushed to each other, and embraced like a pair of long-lost brothers. I was stunned.

“They must have relatives in common,” Poletes explained. “Or one of them might have been a guest in the other’s house hold sometime in the past.”

“But the battle . . .”

Poletes shook his gray head. “What has that to do with it? There are plenty of others to kill.”

The two warriors exchanged swords, then each got back onto his chariot and they drove in opposite directions.

“No wonder this war has lasted for years,” I muttered.

But although Diomedes’ first encounter of the day ended nonviolently, that was the only bit of peace that I saw amid the carnage of battle. Chariots hurtled at each other, spearmen driving their long weapons into the entrails of their opponents. The bronze spear points were themselves the length of a grown man’s arm. When all the power generated by a team of galloping horses was focused on the gleaming tip of a sharp spear point, nothing could stand in its way, not even many-layered shields of oxhide. Armored men were lifted off their feet, out of their chariots, when those spears hit them. Bronze armor was no protection against that tremendous force.

The noble warriors preferred to fight from their chariots, I saw, although here and there men had alighted and faced their opponents on the ground. Still the foot soldiers held back, skulking and squinting in the swirling clouds of dust, content to let the noblemen face each other singly. Were they waiting for a signal? Was there some tactic in this bewildering melee of individual combats? Or was it that the foot soldiers knew they could never face an armed nobleman and those deadly spears?

Here two chariots clashed together, the spearman of one driving his point through the head of the other’s charioteer. There a pair of armored noblemen faced each other on foot, dueling and parrying with their long spears. One of them whirled suddenly and rammed the butt of his spear into the side of his opponent’s helmet. The man dropped to the ground and his enemy drove his spear through his unprotected neck. Blood spurted onto the thirsty ground.

Instead of getting back into his chariot or stalking another enemy, the victorious warrior dropped to his knees and began unbuckling the slain man’s armor.

“A rich prize,” Poletes cackled. “The sword alone should buy food and wine for a month, at least.”

Now the foot soldiers came forward, on both sides, some to help strip the carcass, others to defend it. A comical tug-of-war started briefly but quickly turned into a serious fight with knives, axes, cudgels and hatchets. The armored nobleman made all the difference, though. He cut
through the enemy foot soldiers with his long sword, hacking limbs and lives until the few still standing turned and ran. Then his men resumed stripping the corpse while the nobleman stood guard over them, as effectively out of the battle for the time being as if he himself had been slain.

Many of the chariots were overturned or empty of their warriors by now. Armored men were fighting on foot with long spears or swords. I saw one nobleman pick up rocks and throw them, to good effect. Archers, many of them charioteers who fired from the protection of their cars’ leather-covered side paneling, began picking off unprotected footmen. I saw an armored warrior suddenly drop his spear and paw, howling, at an arrow sticking in his beefy shoulder. A chariot raced by and the warrior in it spitted the archer on his spear, lifting him completely out of his chariot and dragging him in the dust until his dead body wrenched free of the spear’s barbed point.

All this took but a few minutes. There was no order to the battle, no plan, no tactics. It was nothing more than a huge, jumbled melee. The noble contestants seemed more interested in looting the bodies of the slain than defeating the enemy forces. It was more like a game than a war, a game that soaked the ground with blood and filled the air with screams of pain and rage.

The one thing that stood out above all others was that to turn and attempt to flee was much more dangerous than facing the enemy and fighting. I saw a charioteer wheel his team around to get away from two other chariots converging on him. Someone threw a spear that caught him between the shoulder blades. His team ran wild, and while the warrior in the chariot tried to take the reins from the dead hands of his companion and get the horses under control, another spearman drove up and killed him with a thrust in the back.

Foot soldiers who turned away from the fighting took arrows in the back or were cut down by chariot-mounted warriors who swung their swords like scythes.

It was getting difficult to see, the dust was swirling so thickly. I coughed and blinked grit from my eyes. Then I heard a fresh trumpet blare and
the roar of many men shouting in unison. The thunder of horses’ hooves shook the ground.

Through the dust came three dozen chariots heading straight for the place where we stood atop the earthworks rampart.

“Prince Hector!” shouted Poletes, his voice brittle with awe. “See how he slices through the Achaians!”

Here was a man who understood battle tactics, I realized. Prince Hector had either regrouped his main chariot force or had held them back from the opening melee of the battle. Whichever, he was now driving them like the wedge of a spear point through the shocked Achaians, slaughtering left and right. Hector’s massive long spear was stained with blood halfway up its wooden shaft. He carried it lightly as a wand, spitting armored noblemen and leather-clad foot soldiers alike, driving relentlessly toward the rampart that protected the beach, the camp, the boats.

For a few minutes the Achaians tried to fight back, but when Hector’s chariot broke past the ragged line of their chariots and headed straight for the gate at the rampart, the Achaian resistance crumbled. Noblemen and foot soldiers alike, chariots and infantry, they all ran screaming for the safety of the earthworks.

Hector and his Trojan chariots wreaked bloody havoc among the panicked Achaians. With spears and swords and arrows they killed and killed and killed. Men ran hobbling, limping, bleeding toward us. Screams and groans filled the air.

An Achaian chariot rushed bumping and rattling to the gate, riding past and even over fleeing footmen. I recognized the splendid armor of the squat, broad-shouldered warrior in it: Agamemnon, the High King.

He did not look so splendid now. His plumed helmet was gone. His gold-inlaid armor was coated with dust. An arrow protruded from his right shoulder and blood streaked his arm.

“We’re doomed!” he shrieked in a high girlish voice. “We’re doomed!”