The Hittite - Ben Bova [86]
I heard a rooster crow from inside the city, and then another. Where is Poletes? I wondered. Has he fallen asleep or been found by a Trojan sentry?
Just as I was getting to my feet the old storyteller scuttled back through the mist to me.
“The eastern sky is still dark, except for the first touch of faint light between the mountains. Soon the sky will turn milky white, then as rosy as a flower.”
“Odysseos and his troops will be starting out from the camp,” I whispered. “Time to get the tower up.”
The fog was thinning slightly as we pushed on the poles that raised the tower to its vertical position. It was even heavier than it looked, because of the horse hides and weapons we had lashed to its platforms. Teams of men braced the tower with more poles as it rose. There was no way we could muffle the noise of the creaking and our own gasping, grunting exertions. It seemed to take forever to get the thing standing straight, although only a few strenuous moments had passed.
Still, just as the tower tipped over and thumped ponderously against the wall in its final position, I heard voices calling confusedly from up atop the battlements.
I turned to Poletes. “Run back to Odysseos and tell him we’re ready. He’s to come as fast as he can!”
The plan was for Odysseos and a picked squad of fifty of his Ithacans to make their way across the plain on foot, because chariots would have been too noisy. I began to wonder if that had been the smartest approach.
Someone was shouting from inside the walls now and I saw a head appear over the battlements, silhouetted for a brief instant against the graying sky.
I pulled out my sword and swung up onto the ladder that led to the top of the tower. Magro was barely a step behind me, and the rest of my squad started swarming up the tower’s sides, unrolling the horse hides we had placed to protect the tower’s sides against spears and arrows.
“What is it?” I heard a boy’s frightened high-pitched voice from atop the wall.
“It’s a giant horse!” a fear-stricken voice answered. “With warriors inside it!”
11
I reached the topmost platform of the tower, sword in hand. Our calculations had been almost perfect. The platform reared a shin’s length or so higher than the wall’s battlements. Without hesitation I jumped down onto the stone parapet and from there onto the wooden platform behind it.
A pair of stunned Trojan youths stood barely a sword’s length before me, their mouths agape, eyes bulging, long spears in their trembling hands. I rushed at them and cut the closer one nearly in half with a swing of my sword. The other dropped his spear and, screaming, jumped off the platform into the dark street below.
The sky was brightening. The city seemed asleep, but across the angle of the wall I could see another sentry on the platform, his long spear outlined against the gray-pink of dawn. Instead of charging at us he turned and ran toward the square stone tower that flanked the Scaean Gate.
“He’ll alarm the guard,” I said to Magro. “They’ll all be at us in a few moments.”
Magro nodded, his battle-hardened face showing neither fear nor anticipation.
It was now a race between Odysseos’ Ithacans and the Trojan guards. We had won a foothold inside the walls; now our job was to hold it. As my men swiftly broke out the spears and shields that we had roped to the tower’s timbers, I glanced over the parapet. Fog and darkness still shrouded the plain. I couldn’t see Odysseos and his men in the shadows— if they were there.
A dozen Trojan guards spilled out of the watchtower, and I saw even more Trojans rushing toward us from the far side of the tower, running along the south wall, spears leveled. The battle was on.
My men