The Hittite - Ben Bova [81]
A teenager thrust his spear at me. I dodged it and swung at the youth, but there was little purpose in my swing except to scare him off. He backed away slightly, then came at me again. I did not give him a second chance.
The struggle at the gate seemed to go on endlessly, although common sense tells me it took only a few moments. The rest of the Trojans came up, still battling furiously with the main body of the Achaians. Chariots and foot soldiers hacked and slashed and cursed and screamed their final cries in that narrow passage between the walls that flanked the Scaean Gate. Dust and blood and arrows and stones filled the deadly air. The Trojans were fighting for their lives, desperately trying to get inside the gate, just as the Achaians had been trying to escape Hector’s spear only a few days earlier.
Despite our efforts the Trojans still held the gate ajar and kept us from entering it. Sometimes a few determined men can keep an army at bay, and the Trojan rear guard at the gate had the determination born of sheer desperation. They knew that if we forced that gate their city was finished: their lives, their families, their homes would be wiped out. So they held us at bay, new men and boys taking the place of those we killed, while the main body of their army slipped through the open doors, fighting as they retreated to safety.
Then I saw the blow that ended the battle. Still fighting at the narrow entrance to the gate, I had to turn to face the Trojan warriors who were battling their way to the doors in their effort to get inside the city’s walls. I saw Achilles, his eyes burning with battle fury, his mouth open with wild laughter, hacking any Trojan who dared to come within his spear’s reach. Up on the battlements one of the Trojans leaned out with a bow in his hands and fired an arrow toward Achilles’ unprotected back.
As if in a dream, a nightmare, I shouted a warning that was drowned out in the cursing, howling uproar of the battle. I pushed past a halfdozen furiously battling men to reach Achilles as the arrow streaked toward its target. I managed to get a hand on his shoulder and push him out of the way.
Almost.
The arrow struck him on the back of his leg, slightly above the heel. Achilles went down with a high-pitched scream of pain.
9
For an instant the world seemed to stop.
Achilles, the seemingly invulnerable champion, was down in the dust, writhing in pain, an arrow jutting out from the back of his left ankle.
I stood over him and took off the head of the first Trojan who came at him with a single swipe of my sword. Odysseos and another Achaian lord jumped down from their chariots to join me. Suddenly the battle had changed its entire purpose and direction. We were no longer trying to force the Scaean Gate; we were fighting to keep Achilles alive and get him back to our camp.
Slowly we withdrew, and in truth, after a few moments the Trojans seemed glad enough to let us go. They streamed back inside their gate and swung its massive doors shut. I picked up Achilles in my arms while Odysseos and the others formed a guard around us and we headed back to the camp.
For all his ferocity and strength, he was as light as a child. His Myrmidones surrounded us, staring at their wounded prince with shocked, disbelieving eyes. Achilles’ unhandsome face was bathed with sweat, but he kept his lips clamped together in a painful white line as I carried him past the huge windblown oak just beyond the Scaean Gate.
“I was offered a choice,” he muttered, his teeth clenched with pain, “between long life and glory. I chose glory.”
“It’s not a serious wound,” I said.
“The gods will decide how serious it is,” he replied, in a voice so faint I could hardly hear him.
Halfway across the body-littered plain six men ran up to meet us, puffing hard, carrying a stretcher of thongs laced across a wooden frame. I laid Achilles on it as gently as I could. He grimaced, but did not cry out or complain.
Odysseos put a heavy hand on my shoulder. “You saved