Glyn Iliffe - The Gates Of Troy (Adventures of Odysseus)

Odysseus smiled back and gripped his spear. ‘Don’t worry,’ he replied. ‘The oracle said I would live for at least another twenty years.’

‘That’s fine for you, but I don’t have that reassurance.’

‘Then you’ll have to fight, Eperitus,’ Odysseus grinned fiercely, as the horde of warriors at the top of the slope began to march towards them, lowering their spear-points. ‘And you’ll have to fight hard.’

He shouted for the rear ranks to turn and face the force that was forming by the city walls, then pushed his way through to the front of the east-facing line. Most men had retrieved spears from the battlefield after the first clash, and these were now presented towards the approaching Trojans. Eperitus saw Arceisius in the first row of spearmen and forced a route through the tightly packed warriors to stand beside him.

‘When will the others arrive?’ the young squire asked, without averting his eyes from the enemy at the top of the slope.

‘Soon, I hope,’ Eperitus answered, looking beyond the River Scamander to the southern hills. ‘We’ve drawn the Trojans out, as we were ordered, but unless they arrive soon Agamemnon’s plan is going to prove a costly mistake.’

As he finished speaking, a number of things happened. The deep, sinister hum of hundreds of bowstrings came from the other side of the rise, and a moment later the sky was dark with arrows. They fell with deadly effect into the close ranks of the Greeks, and once more cries of pain and death filled the air. At the same moment, they heard the trundle of wheels and the thud of hoofs as the host of Trojan cavalry rushed down the slope towards them, bypassing the heavily armoured spearman in their eagerness to win glory. Finally, there was a great shout from the mass of warriors still forming up by the city gates, who then rushed towards the surrounded Greeks, hurling their spears before them.

Eperitus jammed the bronze-tipped butt of his spear into the ground and prepared to meet the onslaught of horsemen and chariots. He had never faced a cavalry charge before, and as the speeding mass of horses rushed towards him – the beat of their hooves thundering in his ribcage – he felt a terror he had never known before in battle. He tried to remember what his grandfather had taught him about cavalry. He knew a horse would instinctively seek a gap in a wall of spears, or would try to leap over them if they were but two or three deep. Even so, the horse would have to be well trained and sense that its rider was fully committed to the charge; then, if the leading horses attacked, those behind would follow, driven by their herd instinct.

In order to repel the charge, the Greeks only had to hold their nerve and close ranks. If they did that, the approaching horses would baulk and turn aside. But for a man to remain steady as a wave of cavalry bore down on him required bravery, discipline and trust in his comrades. If any of those qualities were lacking and men fled the charge, the terrified horses would stream into the gaps they left and their riders would bring swift death down on the defenders. In the end, it would be a contest between the courage of the rider and the courage of the spearman. And from what Eperitus could see, the Trojan cavalrymen were holding their nerve.

At the last moment, the Greek archers released a deadly volley that spilled scores of men and horses to the ground, but it was not enough to halt the attack. The cavalry came on, the riders yelling with the joy of battle and their mounts wide-eyed with fear. Eperitus watched the throng of horses galloping towards him and shouted for the Ithacans to hold fast. The order was carried down the line, and the inexperienced ranks of half-trained farmers and fishermen drew deep on their courage. With shaking hands and beating hearts they gripped the shafts of their spears and held the line.

Suddenly, the Thessalians to their right began to break up. They had lost their leader and many of their comrades, and the sight of the Trojan horsemen had proved too much. As the gaps appeared in their line the whole force of cavalry seemed to pour towards them, bypassing the unwavering line of spears presented by the Ithacans on one side, and the Myrmidons and Spartans – under the firm command of Achilles and Menelaus – on the other. As the cavalry streamed past, a hail of arrows and spears brought many of them down into the dust, but it was too late to save the unfortunate Thessalians, who were skewered from behind or hacked down as they fled.

Eperitus looked on in horror at the massacre, conscious – as was every man around him – that the Ithacans would have met a similar fate if they had not held their nerve. Then, as he sensed the lines of Trojan spearmen running down the hill towards them, he noticed a horseman chasing after a Thessalian. The Greek threw his hands over the back of his head to protect himself, but the rider’s sword simply chopped through his fingers and sliced into the back of his head, killing him at once. A moment later, he turned his mount around and signalled to a troop of cavalrymen, ordering them after a knot of Thessalians who were fleeing towards the river. And as Eperitus saw the horseman’s face a shock of recognition passed through him. The strength drained from his limbs, forcing him momentarily to lean his weight on his spear as he stared with disbelieving eyes at a man he had not seen for ten years. The Trojan horseman was his father.

Suddenly Calchas’s words returned to him: a second secret would draw him back to Ilium, whether there was war or not. That second secret was his father, a secret that Clytaemnestra had also known but had chosen not to reveal to him. Somehow, beyond Eperitus’s comprehension, the man he had despised for ten years, the man who had usurped the throne of Alybas and brought shame and dishonour on his family, was now a soldier in the army of Troy.

As he stared at the hated face of his father, a new and sudden fury began to sear through his veins like heated bronze, opening old wounds and feeding off the fresh wound of his daughter’s death. It was the desire for vengeance, a rapacious, all consuming lust to lessen the shame and grief of the past – both distant and recent – by the spilling of blood. He could not kill Agamemnon, but there was no promise preventing him from taking vengeance on his father, and as his rage grew within him he saw, at last, a means to reduce his suffering.

‘Where are you going?’ shouted Arceisius as Eperitus broke out of the rank of spearmen and dashed towards a riderless horse.

Eperitus ignored him. Leaping on the back of the black mare, he seized the reins and spurred the animal forward. Arrows flew over his head in both directions as he rode through the broad gap in the Greek line, galloping down the slope towards the place where he had seen his father. Horsemen and chariots thundered all around, firing arrows or hurling spears at the two islands of Greek warriors – the smaller group of Ithacans on one side, some six hundred strong, and the much larger force of Spartans and Myrmidons on the other, numbering more than five thousand. The ground in between was littered with dead and wounded Thessalians. The remainder were either being pursued towards the river or driven onto the spears of the reserves who had poured out of the Scaean Gate under Paris’s command. Many, though, had formed a desperate circle of spears and were fending off repeated attacks from the Trojan cavalry. It was here that Eperitus saw his father, reforming his men for a fresh assault on the battered Thessalians.

‘Father!’ he called, his voice high and clear amidst the din of war. ‘Father!’

Apheidas turned and stared at his son. For a moment, as they looked at each other across the field of death and destruction, it was as if they were no longer part of the battle that raged all around them. Unexpectedly, Apheidas found himself staring at his only remaining son, who in a moment of rash anger he had exiled from his kingdom ten years before. Eperitus stared back, his eyes burning with hatred. Then horn calls were blowing in the distance and reluctantly father and son turned to the hills in the south, where thousands upon thousands of warriors were streaming down towards the fords of the Scamander. At last, Agamemnon had arrived, and with him were the armies of Diomedes, Idomeneus, Ajax and the rest of Greece. They had beached their ships in the bay north of Tenedos and had marched inland, hoping to cut the Trojans off on the plain as they fought the smaller force under Menelaus – the bait, as Agamemnon had referred to them. The bait had been taken, but it was too late to cut the Trojans off on the plain. The Greeks’ best hope now was that Hector would turn and fight, and that they would then defeat his army and pursue it back through the gates into the city.