Ben Bova: Vengeance of Orion

An Achaian chariot rushed bumping and rattling to the gate, riding past and even over the 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 armor was coated with dust. An arrow protruded from his right shoulder and blood streaked the arm.

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

THE Achaians were racing for the safety of the rampart, with the Trojan chariots in hot pursuit, closely followed by the Trojan infantry brandishing swords and axes. Here and there a foot soldier would stop for a moment to sling a stone at the retreating Achaians or drop to one knee to fire an arrow.

An arrow whizzed past me. I turned and saw that Poletes and I were alone on the crest of the rampart. The other thetes , even the whipmaster, had gone down into the camp.

A noisy struggle was taking place at the gate. It was a ramshackle wooden affair, made of planks taken from some of the ships. It was not a hinged door but simply a wooden barricade that could be lifted and wedged into the opening in the earthworks.

Some men were frantically trying to put the gate in place, while others were trying to hold them back until the remainder of the fleeing Achaians could get through. I saw that Hector and his chariots would reach the gate in another minute or less. Once past that gate, I knew, the Trojans would slaughter everyone in the camp.

“Stay here,” I said to Poletes. Without looking to see if he obeyed, I dodged among the stakes planted in the rampart’s crest, heading toward the gate.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a light spear hurtling toward me. My senses seemed to be heightened, sharpened. The world around me went into slow-motion as my body surged into hyperdrive. The javelin came floating lazily through the air, flexing slightly as it flew. I skipped back a step and it struck the ground at my feet, quivering. I yanked it loose and raced toward the gate.

Hector’s chariot was already pounding up the sandy ramp that cut across the trench in front of the rampart. There was no time for anything else, so I leaped from the rampart’s crest onto the ramp, right in front of Hector’s charging horses. I yelled and threw up both arms, and the startled horses reared up, neighing.

For an instant the world stopped, frozen as in a painting on a vase. Behind me the Achaians were struggling to put up the barricade that would hold the Trojans out of the camp. Before me Hector’s team of horses reared high, the unshod hooves of their forelegs flashing inches from my face. I stood crouched slightly, holding the light javelin in both my hands at chest level, ready to move in any direction.

The horses shied away from me, their eyes bulging white with fear, twisting the chariot almost sideways along the pounded-earth ramp. I saw the warrior in the chariot still standing, one hand on the rail, the other raised over his head, holding a monstrously long blood-soaked spear.

Aimed at my chest.

I looked into the eyes of Hector, prince of Troy. Brown eyes they were, calm and deep. No anger, no battle lust. He was a cool and calculating warrior, a thinker among hordes of adrenaline-soaked brutes. I noticed that he wore a small round shield buckled to his left arm instead of the massive body-length type most of the other nobles carried. On it was painted a flying heron, almost in a style that would be called Japanese in millennia to come.

He jabbed the spear at me. I sidestepped and, dropping the javelin I had been carrying, grabbed the hefty ash wood shaft and pulled Hector clear over the railing of his chariot. Wrenching the spear from his one-handed grasp, I swung it against the charioteer’s head, knocking him over the other side of the car.

The horses panicked and stumbled over each other in the narrow passage of the ramp. One of them started sliding along the steep edge of the trench. Whinnying with fear, they backed away and turned, trampling the poor charioteer as they bolted off back down the ramp and toward the distant city, dragging the empty chariot with them.

Hector scrambled to his feet and came at me with his sword. I parried with the spear, holding it like an elongated quarterstaff, and knocked his feet out from under him again.

By this time more Trojans were rushing up the ramp on foot, their chariots useless because Hector’s panicked team had scattered the others.

I glanced behind me. The barricade was up now, and Achaian archers were firing through the slits between its planks. Others were atop the rampart, hurling stones and spears. Hector held his shield up to protect himself against the missiles and backed away. A few Trojan arrows came my way, but I avoided them easily.

The Trojans retreated, but only beyond the distance of a bowshot. There Hector told them to stand their ground.

And just like that the morning’s battle was ended. The Achaians were penned up in their camp, behind the trench and rampart, the sea at their backs. The Trojans held the corpse-strewn plain.

I clambered up the barricade and threw a leg over its top. Hesitating for a second, I glanced back at the battlefield. How many of those youthful lords who had come on our boat were now lying out there, stripped of their splendid armor, their jeweled swords, their young lives? I saw birds circling high above in the clean blue sky. Not gulls: vultures.

Poletes called to me. “Orion, you must be a son of Ares! A mighty warrior to best Prince Hector!”

Other voices joined the praise as I let myself over the rickety barricade and dropped lightly to the ground. They surrounded me, clapping my back and shoulders, smiling, shouting. Someone offered me a wooden cup of wine.

“You saved the camp!”

“You stopped those horses as if you were Poseidon himself!”

Even the whipmaster looked on me fondly. “That was not the action of a thes ,” he said, looking me over carefully, perhaps for the first time, out of his bulging frog’s eyes. “Why is a warrior working as a paid man?”

Without even thinking about it, I replied, “A duty I must perform. A duty to a god.”

They edged away from me. Their smiles turned to awe. Only the whipmaster had the courage to stand his ground before me. He nodded and said quietly, “I understand. Well, the god must be pleased with you this morning.”

I shrugged. “We’ll know soon enough.”

Poletes came to my side. “Come, I’ll find you a good fire and hot food.”

I let the old storyteller lead me away.

“I knew you were no ordinary man,” he said as we made our way through the scattered huts and tents. “Not someone with your shoulders. Why, you’re almost as tall as Great Ajax. A nobleman, I told myself. A nobleman, at the very least.”

He chattered and yammered, telling me how my deeds looked to his eyes, reciting the day’s carnage as if he were trying to set it firmly in his memory for future recall. Every group of men we passed offered us a share of their midday meal. The women in the camp smiled at me. Some were bold enough to come up to us and offer me freshly cooked meats and onions on skewers.

Poletes shooed them all away. “Tend to your masters’ hungers,” he snapped. “Bind their wounds and pour healing ointments over them. Feed them and give them wine and bat your cow-eyes at them.”

To me he said, “Women cause all the trouble in the world, Orion. Be careful of them.”

“Are these women slaves or thetes ?” I asked.

“There are no women thetes . It’s unheard of. A woman, working for wages? Unheard of!”

“Not even prostitutes?”

“Ah! In the cities, yes, of course. Temple prostitutes. But they are not thetes . It’s not the same thing at all.”