The Armour of Achilles (32 page)

A
s Hector rode away and the Trojans fell back in disorder, Odysseus drove his chariot through the chaos to where Achilles stood. Eperitus was in the car beside him, his spears expended and his sword wet with gore from tip to hilt.

‘You’re hurt,’ Odysseus said, forced to shout over the sound of ringing metal and the yells of struggling men.

‘It’s nothing,’ Achilles grunted irritably, not even looking at the deep gash on his upper arm.

He watched Hector disappear behind the shattered ranks of his army, then ran back to his chariot and seized the yoke that hung between the shoulders of the horses. Pedasus’s place had been taken by the immortal Balius, brother of Xanthus. The siblings were magnificent beasts and proud, but the prince looked at them sternly.

‘My friends, carry me into battle so that I can take my vengeance on these miserable Trojans. And when the day’s fighting is over, bring me out alive again; don’t leave me dead on the field, as was Patroclus’s fate.’

Xanthus stamped his foot and lowered his head, whinnying pitifully as his mane stroked across the high grass. Achilles’s eyes widened with surprise, then he cupped his hand beneath the animal’s chin and raised his head up again.

‘Don’t prophesy to me, Xanthus,’ he said. ‘My mother has already told me I won’t live long after Hector dies, but she didn’t deter me and neither will you. If a man cannot face his fate, he is not worthy to call himself a man. Now, take me after Hector or I will cut your throats and find other, less wilful horses.’

Odysseus and Eperitus exchanged glances as Achilles stepped into his chariot and lashed the reins. Xanthus and Balius shook their manes and neighed loudly, then shot forward. Odysseus watched Achilles disappear behind the clouds of dust that had enveloped the fighting, then turned to Eperitus.

‘Did you hear what he said?’

‘He thought the horse was prophesying,’ Eperitus answered.

‘And did you hear the horse say anything? I mean, you’ve got sharper ears than I have . . .’

‘Horses don’t talk, Odysseus. If Xanthus spoke, it was in Achilles’s head. His grief has turned his mind.’

Odysseus nodded and dropped a hand on his captain’s shoulder. ‘Maybe it has. And maybe a man of his quality was never quite sane in the first place. Either way, the beast inside him has been unleashed at last and I doubt either Hector or the walls of Troy will be able to stop him any more. Come on, let’s get after him.’

The Trojans were in open flight across the plain now. All semblance of order had gone and though a few fought a rolling rearguard under the direction of Paris, Aeneas and others, many lesser men simply tossed their weapons aside and fled in terror, hoping to reach the safety of Troy before they could be cut down. Achilles, though, was relentless in his pursuit. Odysseus and Eperitus followed in his wake, watching with a mixture of awe and horror as he cut down one man after another, riding down the living or driving over the slain so that clouds of red gore sprayed up from the heavy wheels of his chariot. The pitiless efficiency with which he slaughtered the Trojans seemed to inspire the whole of the Greek army, who chased their hated enemies back across the battlefields of the preceding days until, eventually, they reached the slopes overlooking Troy, with the broad, gleaming ribbon of the Scamander below.

Until this point, only a series of quick, skilfully directed attacks by Apheidas’s horsemen had saved the Trojans from utter destruction. By forcing the Greeks to keep their order, they prevented the pursuit from becoming a rout and enabled many Trojans to escape the worst of the butchery. But the Greek archers and cavalry had taken their toll of Apheidas’s men, and as the Trojan foot soldiers fled down the slope towards the fords and the city beyond, the cavalry turned tail and went with them.

Achilles drove through the middle of the human stampede, followed by Odysseus, Eperitus and a dozen other chariots. They split the Trojans in two, letting the greater part flee across the fords but driving many into a bend of the river, where the banks were high and the waters between them deep. Without stopping to strip off their armour, the panicked soldiers leapt into the fast-flowing waters and tried to get to the safety of the far bank. Those who could not swim drowned quickly, while many who could, drowned anyway beneath the weight of breastplates and greaves, or the sheer mass of men who were struggling to escape certain death on the grassy slopes above.

Heedless of his own heavy armour, Achilles halted his chariot, threw his shield across his back and jumped into the river after the Trojans. The water by the banks was shallow enough to stand in and was thick with rushes. He waded through them and began laying about himself with his sword, ruthlessly killing any man who could not escape beyond the circle of his reach. Odysseus and Eperitus left their own chariot and ran down to the lip of the slope, where they looked on in horror at the scene before them. Though both men had witnessed much slaughter in their lives, they were appalled to see the water turn pink with the blood of Achilles’s victims and the banks become choked with their corpses. Equally horrifying was the sight of hundreds of Trojans drowning in their panic as they fled, or being shot by the arrows of the Locrian archers who had reached the riverbanks and were pouring missiles into the press of bodies, regardless of whether they were alive or dead. The air was filled with screams of pain and anguish, and it took Odysseus a moment to realize that Achilles was calling to him as he pushed a young noble through the rushes.

‘Bind his hands with his belt and send him back to the camp,’ he shouted.

Odysseus took the shocked youth by the wrist and hauled him up the muddy embankment, but no sooner had he secured his hands behind his back than Achilles sent another nobleman after him. Another followed and then another so that, even with Eperitus’s help, Odysseus had to call some of the archers from their sport and get them to assist with the prisoners. Why Achilles had stopped killing he could not guess, as up to that point he had cut down any Trojan he could find without pity or remorse; but soon twelve young men stood cascading water on to the grass, their hands tied and their heads hung low, though doubtless thankful to be alive.

Odysseus and Eperitus returned to the lip of the bank, expecting more prisoners as Achilles waded further into the congested water. But as the Trojans held out their hands in gestures of submission, he began to kill them again without mercy, lopping off heads and limbs or opening stomachs so that men fell into the water surrounded by their own entrails. As the killing resumed, one Trojan ducked under the sweep of Achilles’s blade and fell to his knees before him, throwing his arms about the prince’s legs so that only his head remained above the water.

‘My lord Achilles,’ he pleaded, speaking in Greek. ‘Do you not recognize me?’

His words pierced the killing trance that had fallen on the Phthian prince and Achilles looked down at him.

‘Who are you?’

‘Lycaon, one of Priam’s sons. You captured me in battle last year and we shared a meal together before you sold me into slavery on the island of Lemnos. I escaped and came back to my father only a few days back, but you fetched a good price for me then and you’ll surely get the same or more now.’

‘My days of showing mercy to Trojans ended with the death of Patroclus.’

‘But the men on the bank—’

Achilles took Lycaon by the hair and forced his head back.

‘I have something else in mind for them,’ he said as he raised his sword.

‘But you can’t kill a suppliant,’ Lycaon protested, flinching and shaking with fear, but unable to escape Achilles’s iron grip. ‘You’ll bring the wrath of the gods upon yourself!’

Achilles smiled sardonically and brought the blade down through Lycaon’s neck and collar bone.

‘What more can the gods do to me, Lycaon?’ he mocked, still holding the dead youth by his black hair. ‘Nothing! Go and feed the fishes, son of Priam; as for the rest of you, I will bleed Troy white for the death of Patroclus, and neither this river nor those walls will save you from my wrath.’

He launched himself once more upon the Trojans, whose bodies clogged the river now and sullied its once clear waters with their blood. A few had made it to the other side – those who were strongest and who had fought their own comrades to reach the embankment – but those who remained alive in the water had either thrown away their weapons or did not have the will to resist the terrible figure of Achilles. They fell before him like sacrificial goats, kicking and clawing at each other in their efforts to escape, but were shown neither compassion nor clemency as Achilles continued his butcher’s work.

Then the river level dropped suddenly and began to draw back against the natural direction of its flow, revealing the jumbled mass of armoured corpses that had been dragged to its stony bed. As Achilles stood knee-high in the water, dumbfounded by the sudden draining of the waters, there was a sound like a strong wind approaching from the east.

‘What is it?’ Odysseus asked, as all eyes were turned upriver.

Then he saw a wall of water like a giant ocean wave come rolling down the course of the Scamander at an incredible pace, bringing rocks and chunks of bank with it as it came. He shouted a warning to Achilles, who saw the danger and waded as quickly as the shallow waters would allow him to an elm tree on the far bank.

‘Run!’ Odysseus shouted, grabbing Eperitus by the arm and dragging him towards the slope.

‘Wait,’ Eperitus protested, pulling back. ‘Achilles’ll be washed into the bay and drowned. We have to help him!’

Odysseus paused and looked down at their stricken comrade, frowning in consternation at what to do. While the archers on the bank turned and fled, the men trapped in the river could only throw their arms up in terror as the water carried them away. Many were killed outright by the rocks, or were drowned quickly by the volume and pressure of the water as it overwhelmed them. The elm that Achilles had thrown his powerful arms about collapsed and fell into the river, damming its flow for a moment before the pressure swept it away, and Achilles with it.

Odysseus and Eperitus sprinted after him, following the river’s edge in the hope of intercepting the prince at the ford. As they ran, the Scamander broke its banks behind them and spread across the marshes, rolling the corpses of the drowned and murdered Trojans before it. Chariots were tossed on to their sides and smashed to pieces, releasing their teams to gallop up the slope in panic, while many of the escaping archers they passed were caught by the waters and bowled over. The Greek cavalry, which was crossing the ford in pursuit of the Trojans, turned and galloped back up the slope to safety, while Odysseus and Eperitus had their legs knocked away as the deluge passed beneath them.

‘There he is!’ Eperitus cried out, pointing downriver.

Achilles was using all his strength to hold on to a large rock that had once marked the centre of the ford. He still wore the helmet and breastplate his mother had brought for him from Hephaistos’s smithy, but the magnificent shield was nowhere to be seen.

‘We’ll never reach him there,’ Odysseus shouted over the roar of the water that was now up to their shins and threatening to take their legs away from beneath them. ‘The river’s too deep. And even if we did . . .’

But Eperitus was not listening. He ran to the edge of what had once been the riverbank and dived in, instantly disappearing beneath the fast-flowing water. He bobbed up again a few moments later and began to swim with the current to where Achilles was being pounded by the relentless Scamander.

‘And even if we
do
,’ Odysseus shouted after him, ‘how are we going to get back to dry ground?’

Shaking his head, he leapt in after his friend. The cold water shocked the breath from his lungs as he plunged below its surface. For a moment everything was a turmoil of darkness and bubbles, mixed with the pounding of his heart in his eardrums as the angry river sucked him down towards its bed, aided by the weight of his treacherous armour. He kicked against it with all his strength and shot upwards, gulping in a lungful of air as he broke free of the raging waters. Then the violent force of the current seized hold of him and swept him inexorably towards the finger-like rock, where he caught a glimpse of Eperitus and Achilles holding on to each other as their strength began to fade.

Odysseus turned and began swimming against the current to slow his approach to the rock, all the time looking over his shoulder so that he would not be driven directly against it. Then, at the last moment, he turned again and was swept into the waiting arms of Eperitus and Achilles.

‘The flood can’t last for ever,’ Eperitus shouted over the roar of the Scamander as they stood chest-high in the water. ‘We just have to hold on to the rock and each other.’

‘And pray!’ Achilles added.

Odysseus nodded, squinting against the spray. He turned his back to the rock and linked arms with Eperitus, the pressure of the water thrusting them back against the rock.

‘Mistress Athena,’ he yelled. ‘If ever you’ve been pleased with the sacrifices we three have offered to you, help us now! If ever—’

He stopped and looked down into the tumultuous waters. There, but a little way to the right of the rock, was Achilles’s shield, its gold, silver and bronze gleaming beguilingly at him from beneath the surface of the river. All he needed to do was wade out a little into the waters and reach down, but as soon as the temptation had formed in his head he knew that the force of the Scamander would sweep him away. It was as if the shield were trying to lure him to his death.