The Hittite - Ben Bova [14]
Oetylos had shovels waiting for us. Grousing and frowning, my men took the tools and started trudging up the slope of the rampart.
“You, too, storyteller,” Oetylos said to Poletes, and he threw the old man a filth-encrusted burlap sack: for carrying sand, I surmised.
We were not the only ones plodding up the rampart. Work gangs of slaves and thetes were also heading for the top, shovels on their shoulders, with whip-brandishing overseers behind them. At least we had no taskmaster to shout at us.
The rampart stretched along the length of the beach, protecting the camp and the boats pulled up onto the sand. I could see only one opening in the sandy wall, protected by a ramshackle wooden gate and guarded by half a dozen lounging spearmen. In front of the rampart was a broad ditch, studded with wooden spikes, as was the top of the fortification itself.
Once at the top of the rampart we had a fine view of the plain and the city of Troy up on the bluff. Its walls were crenellated, its gates tightly shut. Inside the Achaian camp warriors were eating a breakfast of broiled mutton and thick flat bread, while their slaves and men-at-arms yoked horses to chariots and sharpened swords and spears.
“They’re going to attack the city,” I surmised aloud.
Poletes answered in his surprisingly strong voice, “They will do battle on the plain. The Trojans will come out this day to fight.”
“Why should they come out from behind those walls?” I wondered.
Poletes shrugged his skinny shoulders. “It has been arranged by the heralds. Agamemnon offered battle and white-bearded Priam accepted. The princes of Troy will ride out in their fine chariots to fight the kings of the Achaians.”
That didn’t make much sense to me, and I wondered if the storyteller was trying to make up a dramatic scene out of whole cloth.
As the sun rose higher in the sparkling clear sky we worked at improving the rampart. I immediately saw that the best thing to do was dig sand out of the bottom of the ditch that fronted the defensive wall and carry it up to the top. That way the ditch got deeper and the rampart grew higher. It was hot work, and my men sweated almost as much as they grumbled and swore about their work.
I dug and sweated alongside them. I assigned Poletes to stay at the summit, watching over our weapons and shields and jerkins, which we had left there. We worked in our skirts, bare to the waist.
The morning was quite beautiful. Up at the top of the rampart the cool breeze from the sea felt good on my sweaty skin. The sky was a wondrously clear bowl of sparkling blue, dotted by screeching white gulls that soared above us. The sea was a much deeper blue where restless surges of white-foamed waves danced endlessly. Grayish brown humps of islands rose along the distant horizon. In the other direction Troy’s towers seemed to glower darkly at us from across the plain. The distant hills behind the city were dark with trees, and beyond them rose hazy bluish mountains, wavering in the heat.
Slaves and thetes of the other digging crews scrambled up the slope lugging woven baskets filled with sand.
I saw that Poletes had wandered off a ways to talk with some of the others, his skinny arms waving animatedly, his eyes big and round. At length he returned to our cache of weapons and clothes and beckoned to me.
“All is not well among the high and mighty this morning,” he halfwhispered to me, grinning with delight. “There’s some argument between my lord Agamemnon and Achilles, the great slayer of men. They say that Achilles will not leave his lodge today.”
“Not even to help us dig?” I joked.
Poletes cackled with laughter. “The High King Agamemnon has sent a delegation to Achilles to beseech him to join the battle. I don’t think it’s going to work. Achilles is young and arrogant. He thinks his shit smells like roses.”
I laughed back at the old man.
My men and I toiled like laborers while the sun climbed higher in the cloudless sky. Agamemnon and the other Achaian leaders must be very fearful of the Trojans, I thought, to put us to work on improving