Ben Bova - The Hittite

“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.”

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 time, I realized, as we made our way through the confused jumble of the camp. Men were gathering around cook fires; pale smoke wafted away on the wind. Dirty-faced slave women in rags stirred big pots of bronze while men sat close by, cleaning weapons, binding fresh wounds, jabbing daggers into the pots to yank out steaming half-cooked chunks of meat. The noise of men shouting back and forth and beasts yowling was enough to make my head hurt; the stench of dung and animals and smoke hung in the air like a palpable cloud.

There were plenty of women in the camp: slaves tending their masters’ cook fires, carrying heavy double-handled jugs of wine on their shoulders, polishing armor with the resigned, hopeless patience that slavery teaches.

As instructed, Poletes marched us to the camp of Agamemnon, High King among the Achaians. The old man pointed out the two dozen boats that Agamemnon had brought to Troy, all pulled far up on the sandy beach, side by side, each decorated with a golden lion painted on its prow. Agamemnon’s quarters was the largest wooden lodge I had yet seen, its main door guarded by no less than six armed warriors in shining bronze armor and helmets.

Poletes spoke to one of the guards, who walked off into the lengthening shadows of the noisy, busy camp.

“How long has this war been going on?” I asked Poletes.

Clutching his thin arms over his bare chest to try to ward off the growing cold, Poletes told me, “For years, now. Of course, much of that time has been spent raiding the villages and farms nearby. It took awhile for these mighty warriors to work up the courage to attack Troy itself.”