The Hittite - Ben Bova [21]
My wife was a slave of the High King’s. How can I get her away from him? I asked myself. Are my sons alive? Where are they?
We came to a group of men sitting around one of the larger cook fires, down close beside the black-tarred boats. They looked up and made room for us. Up on the boat nearest us a large canvas of blue and white stripes had been draped to form a tent. A helmeted guard stood on the deck before it, with a well-groomed dog by his side. I stared at the carved and painted figurehead on the boat’s prow, a grinning dolphin’s face against a deep blue background.
“The camp of Odysseos,” Poletes explained to me in a low voice as we sat and were offered generous bowls of roasted meat and goblets of honeyed wine. “These are Ithacans.”
He poured a few drops of wine on the ground before drinking, and made me do the same. “Reverence the gods, Hittite,” Poletes instructed me, surprised that neither I nor my men knew the custom.
The men around the fire praised me for my daring at the barricade, then fell to wondering which particular god had inspired me to such heroic action. The favorites were Poseidon and Ares, although Athene was a close runner-up and even Zeus himself was mentioned now and then. They soon fell to arguing passionately among themselves without bothering to ask me or my men about it.
I was happy to let them quarrel. I listened, and as they argued I learned much about this war.
They had been campaigning in the region each summer for many years. Achilles, Menalaos, Agamemnon and the other warrior kings had been ravaging the coastal lands, burning towns and taking captives, until finally they had worked up the courage— and the forces— to besiege Troy itself.
But without Achilles, their fiercest fighter, the men thought their prospects were dim. Apparently Agamemnon had awarded Achilles a young woman captive and then had changed his mind and taken her for himself. This insult was more than the haughty young Achilles could endure, even from the High King.
“The joke of it all,” said one of the men, tossing a well-gnawed lamb joint to the dogs hovering beyond our circle, “is that Achilles prefers his friend Patrokles to any woman.”
They all nodded and muttered agreement. The strain between Achilles and Agamemnon was not over a sexual partner; it was a matter of honor and stubborn pride. On both sides, as far as I could see.
As we ate and talked the skies darkened and thunder rumbled from inland.
“Father Zeus speaks from Mount Ida,” said Poletes.
One of the foot soldiers, his leather jacket stained with spatters of grease and blood, grinned up at the cloudy sky. “Maybe Zeus will give us the afternoon off.”
“Can’t fight in the rain,” one of the others agreed.
Sure enough, within minutes it began pelting down. We scattered for what ever shelter we could find. Poletes and I hunkered down in the lee of Odysseos’ boat. Through the driving rain I saw my men scurrying for the shelter of the tents scattered around Odysseos’ boats.
“Now the great lords will arrange a truce, so that the women and slaves can go out and recover the bodies of our dead. To night their bodies will be burned and a barrow raised over their charred bones.” He sighed. “That’s how the rampart began, as a barrow to cover the remains of the slain heroes.”
I sat and watched the rain pouring down, turning the beach into a quagmire, dotting the frothing sea with splashes. The gusting wind drove gray sheets of rain across the bay, and it got so dark and misty that I could not see the headland. It was chill and miserable and there was nothing to do except sit like dumb animals and wait for the sun to return.
I crouched as close as I could to the boat’s hull, smelling the sharp tang of the pitch they had smeared over the planks to keep the vessel watertight. My wife is among the slaves in Agamemnon’s camp, I knew. Are my sons with her? Are they still living?
Suddenly I realized that a man was standing in front of me. I looked up and saw a sturdy, thick-torsoed man with a grizzled dark beard and a surly look on his