Doctor Who_ The Myth Makers - Donald Cotton [46]
In fact, when you thought about it, nobody at this turning point in History appeared to have the vaguest notion about what was going on, or what they should do about it. Perhaps the participants in what later prove to have been great events never do: or is it just that you only need one man with his eye on the ball to urge events onwards? If so, then Odysseus was the fellow in this instance – has to have been!
He had the great advantage, you see, of enjoying violence for its own sake; and that with a pure, clear-sighted unswerving devotion, undistracted by any weak-kneed moral considerations!
That’s the way to succeed in life, you know: never see anyone’s point of view but your own, and you’ll romp home past the winning post. Bound to! But it’s a difficult trick, and one that I never quite got the hang of.
These Trojans, for instance, obviously had no conception of optimum stress, or moments of inertia; and the horse was straining at every screaming sinew, as they rocked it back and forth, trying to shift it out of the pit its own weight was digging for itself. I imagined that an outbreak of travel-sickness would shortly strike the occupants; so I moved smartly out from under, and retired to a slight distance.
But at last, with a final shuddering groan, the grotesque structure began to move – and once under way, of course, there was no stopping it. Ropes, arms and legs snapped like old bowstrings as it trundled remorselessly forwards.
Funny, what you notice: amidst the general haphazard destruction, one of its vast hooves came down on top of a nest-full of fledgeling larks, which I had been watching with affection.
And I remember thinking: ‘Yes – and that’s only for starters!’
Think what Cassandra could have made of an incident like that!
But it was no use hanging about philosophising, so I set off ahead of them towards what I hoped would be my final involvement in this whole misguided farrago.
There was no difficulty about getting in to Troy now: the enormous gates stood wide open, and the whole city seemed to have come out into the streets to enjoy the splendid, triumphal climax of the war. Poor fools! Little did they know that Zeus was about to slip them the staccato tomato!
Before going in, I paused and looked back the way I had come.
Already you could see the approaching monster quite clearly, silhouetted against the full moon; its great, grinning head nodding and tossing, as if to say: ‘You wait just a little longer, my dears; and what a nice surprise you’re going to have!’
Indescribably ominous and horrible, the whole thing! I shuddered, turned on my heel, and popped back into the palace
– while it was still there.
Paris was the hero of the hour – there was no doubt about that. To this day, I cannot imagine why nobody but Cassandra seemed to suspect that anything might be a tiny bit wrong; and that success doesn’t come that easily in the affairs of men.
Perhaps if Hector had still been alive to lead them, things might have been different.
But again, I don’t know: people generally believe what they want to believe – and the Trojans wanted to believe that the war was over at last. And you’ll admit they had every excuse for doing so. After all, the Greeks had gone back where they came from, hadn’t they? And it seemed they had their new little friend, Cressida, to thank for that.
The general opinion seemed to be that she had somehow conjured this loathsome ancestral god of theirs out of thin air; and it was this macabre manifestation which had finally persuaded the superstitious, Olympus--orientated Greeks that the game was up. So the least the Trojans could do under the circumstances was to invite the faithful old horse in for a bundle of hay and a bit of a sing-song. Churlish not to, in fact. Quite.
So there Vicki was; guest of honour at the victory banquet –
and how she was ever going to find an excuse for slipping away to the TARDIS for a moment, I couldn’t imagine. Not that