The Hittite - Ben Bova [111]
Lukkawi and Uhri goggled at the walls of Ti-smurna, and the towers of the citadel that rose above them. To them, it was a magic city of princes and warriors. To me, it was a well-defended city, but hardly impregnable. I could see where a determined army with proper siege equipment could break through those walls and take the city. I wondered what kind of an army they had.
I sent Harta and one of the new men, a Phrygian named Drakos who spoke the local tongue well, into the city to see what they could learn. They returned a day later to report there was no knowledge of the fall of Troy or of Achaians seeking Helen. Yet I worried about being pursued. We skirted Ti-smurna and moved on, southward, still following the coast road.
The rainy season began, and although it turned the roads into quagmires of slick, sticky mud and made us miserable and cold, it also stopped most of the bands of brigands from their murderous marauding. Most of them, at least. We still had to fight our way through a trap in the hills a few weeks south of Ti-smurna.
I myself was nearly killed by a farmer who thought we were after his wife and daughters. Stinking and filthy, the farmer had hidden himself in his miserable hovel of a barn— nothing more than a low cave that he had put a gate to— and rammed a pitchfork in my back when I went in to pick out a pair of lambs. It was food we were after, not women. We had paid the farmer’s fat, ugly wife with a bauble from the loot of Troy, but the man had concealed himself when he had first caught sight of us, expecting us to rape his women and burn what ever we could not carry away with us.
He lunged at my back, murder in his frightened, cowardly eyes. Fortunately, Magro was close enough to knock his arm away partially. The pitchfork’s tines caught in my jerkin and rasped along my ribs; I felt them like a sawtoothed knife ripping into me.
Magro clouted him to his knees while I sank against the dank wall of the cave, hot blood trickling down my side. The farmer expected us to kill him by inches, and Magro had drawn his sword, ready to hack his head off. But I stopped him. We left him quaking and kneeling in the dung of his animals.
Back at the wagons, Magro helped me take off my leather jerkin and the linen tunic beneath it. The tunic was soaked with blood and badly ripped.
“It didn’t go deep,” Magro said.
I felt weak, sweaty. “Deep enough to suit me,” I muttered, lowering myself to the ground.
Tiwa came up with clean rags and a bucket of water. Helen walked slowly toward me, her eyes wide, her lips trembling.
“You’re hurt,” she gasped.
“It’s not serious,” I said, trying to sound brave. “I’ve had worse.”
She knelt at my side and took the bucket and rags from Tiwa. Without a word she dipped them in the water and began to gently clean my wounds. It hurt, but I said nothing. The men gathered around and watched until Helen tied two of the rags around my rib cage with her own hands.
“The bleeding will stop soon,” Magro muttered. Then he and the other men turned away, leaving Helen and me alone.
“Thank you,” I said to her, my voice half choking in my throat.
She nodded wordlessly, then got to her feet and walked back to the wagon. My two little boys were standing there by the donkeys, staring at me. I waved them over to me.
I could see the fear in their eyes.
“It’s nothing,” I said to them. “Just a scratch.”
Lukkawi made a tiny smile. To his brother he said bravely, “No one can kill our father.”
I wished that was true.
10
The rains poured down day after day out of sullen gray skies. We were wet to our skins, our cloaks and clothing soaked, our bags of provisions sodden. The donkeys trudged through the mud slowly, grudgingly. The horses were spattered with mud up to their bellies. We were miserable, cold, our tempers fraying. Some nights it rained so hard we couldn’t even start a cook fire.
With the rain came fever. I felt hot and cold at the same time, shivering and sweating. That farmer’s dung-coated pitchfork probably carried the evil