David Gemmell - Shield of Thunder

On the beach the courtiers were still waiting, their long white cloaks fluttering in the faint breeze.

“Are you feeling strong, Achilles?” Agamemnon asked the young warrior beside Peleus.

“Always,” Achilles answered. “You think Hektor will take part in the games?” His dark eyes gleamed as he asked the question, and Agamemnon saw the longing in him for combat and glory.

Agamemnon thought about the question. It was an interesting one. King Priam would be seeking to impress the kings of the west with the power of Troy. How better to show that power than to have the mighty Hektor humble the champions of those kings? And yet… what if Hektor did not prevail? What if the ultimate champion of the games was from the west? He looked at Achilles. The man’s strength was obvious, his shoulders broad, his muscles finely honed. He had proved himself in battle and in bouts, where his massive fists had pounded valiant opponents to the dust. Could Hektor defeat Achilles? Would Priam risk such a bout?

Would I? he wondered.

But then, I am not Priam, he reasoned. The king of Troy was addicted to risk, and he wondered if Priam’s vanity would dictate that Hektor would stand with the athletes. He saw that Achilles was still waiting patiently for his answer.

“No,” he said, “I do not think Hektor will take part. But it could be we might engineer it. We will see.”

“I pray that he does,” Achilles said. “I tire of the stories of Hektor the man killer, Hektor the hero. Whom has he fought? What men of worth? A few skinny Gypptos, a handful of Hittite rebels. Thrakian renegades, ill armed and poorly led. His legend is built on straw. I will tear it down for him.”

“Ha!” Peleus said with a broad smile. “There speaks a prince of Thessaly! By the gods, Agamemnon, my son will humble that proud Trojan.” As he spoke, he clapped Agamemnon on the shoulder.

“I have no doubt of it,” the Mykene king replied, masking his irritation at the touch. One day, he thought, I will take great pleasure in having hot irons thrust through your eyes. His loathing of Peleus was absolute, though he never allowed it to show. Peleus was important to his ambition, and that was all that mattered at this time. The attack on Troy, when it came, would need huge numbers of warriors, and Peleus had eight thousand fighting men under his command and a son worth a hundred more. For those men Agamemnon could bury his hatred beneath smiles of comradeship and promises of alliance. He could ignore the gross excesses of the man, the rape of children and the casual murders of female slaves, tortured and throttled. Peleus was a brute who killed for pleasure. Agamemnon would wait. When Troy was his, Peleus would be the first to die. The first of many. For a moment only the festering hatred he felt for his brother kings surged to the surface: the spindly Nestor, the braggart Idomeneos, and the ugly storyteller Odysseus. And more. He swallowed hard, licking dry lips with a dry tongue. All enemies will be dispatched, he told himself, but each in his day. Today was not the day to think of the vile Peleus or any of the other kings of the west. Today was about Priam.

Once more he glanced up at the golden city. A chariot decorated with gold and drawn by two pure white horses emerged. It was being driven by a broad-shouldered man in a tunic of pale blue and a white cloak embroidered with silver thread. His long golden hair and close-cropped beard were streaked with white. Priam was growing old, but still he radiated authority. Crowds drew back, and many cheered as the king rode his chariot down to the beach. Agamemnon felt his emotions surge, a heady mixture of hatred and admiration. Even strangers to this city would be in no doubt they were in the presence of a king as Priam steered his chariot through the throng.

Agamemnon was well aware that he himself did not look mighty, with his rounded shoulders, slim frame, and ungainly gait. Nevertheless, despite this drawback he had made himself the most famous warrior king in the western world. He knew exactly why. What he lacked in physical majesty was more than compensated for by his utter ruthlessness. Enemies died. Their families died. Their mothers, their fathers, their uncles, and their friends died. Agamemnon engendered fear. It enveloped his opponents like a sea mist. And he could plot a campaign or a battle and wage it mercilessly and brilliantly until it was won.

He gazed up again at the mighty walls of Troy. It was a prize worth taking, he thought.

Cold dread struck him, causing an involuntary shiver. Troy was no longer merely a prize, a city to be plundered. The conqueror of Troy would have immortal fame and the opportunity of empire. To fail here would be to lie in a forgotten grave in the middle of a ruined nation. Pushing such dark thoughts from his mind, he turned to his companions.

“Now we go ashore,” he said as the Trojan king’s chariot drew up on the beach below the ship. “The fox has come to greet us. We will stroke his ego and smile at his jests. And as we smile, we will picture the day he is on his knees before us, his city in flames, his sons dead, his life a few heartbeats from its end.”

Antiphones stood on the beach, his brother Polites beside him, with several courtiers in attendance. He was there to greet the Mykene king but soon realized Agamemnon would not leave his ship until Priam deigned to make an entrance.

The heat was strong, and Antiphones began to sweat. His vast bulk was bearing down on his knee joints, which were beginning to ache. Beside him the skinny Polites was dabbing at the bald spot on his crown with a piece of embroidered linen. Neither man spoke, and Antiphones wished he could be anywhere but there.

He looked up at the prow of the black galley, where he could see a round-shouldered man with a black chin beard. Was this the dreaded Agamemnon, butcher of cities? Antiphones sighed. Though he was losing weight fast, he was still grotesque in his own eyes, a soft, plump creature other men looked upon with either scorn or pity.

That he had become a hero during the attack on the city the previous autumn meant little to him, for when men referred to his slaying of the assassins and his warning of the raid on Priam’s palace, they spoke of the “fat hero.”

Even in that they were wrong, he thought darkly.

He remembered the day Father had come to his sickbed, where he was recovering from the stab wounds he had suffered, wounds that would have killed a thinner man. The blades had been defeated by the wealth of flesh guarding his body.

Priam had walked into the room and stood by the bed, regarding his son with eyes that shone with both contempt and concern.

“Well, boy, I am told you acted with courage. I must say I am surprised.”

“Why would that be, Father? Am I not the son of Priam and the brother of Hektor?”

Priam had shrugged. “Let us not argue, Antiphones. Let us merely say I misjudged you. Helikaon tells me that without your warning we would not have been able to shut the gates in time. Then the Thrakians would have been upon us before we had a chance to muster a defense.”

“That was all he told you?”

“Is there more?”

“There is always more, Father.” Anger had ripped through him then, making his wounds burn. “Would you like to hear it?”

“Well, I am here, so I might as well,” the king answered, sitting down on the bed. “Will there be more surprises?”

“I plotted with Agathon to kill you. I only turned away at the last because he planned to murder all my brothers and their families.” Antiphones had expected rage and then that soldiers would be summoned to drag him from the bed and murder him. Instead, Priam merely shrugged.