The Hittite - Ben Bova [88]
“So the herald is a warrior after all,” he called to me, advancing toward me with leveled spear.
Sliding my sword from its sheath, I replied, “Yes. Is the stealer of women a warrior as well?”
“A better one than you,” Paris taunted.
Stalling for time, I said, “Prove it. Face me man to man, your spear against my sword.”
He glanced past me, at my men battling at the top of our siege tower. “Much as I would enjoy that, today is not the day for such pleasures.”
“Today is the last day of your life, Paris,” I said.
As if on cue, a piercing, blood-curdling war cry screeched from behind me. Odysseos!
Paris looked startled for a moment, then he yelled to his followers, “Clear the wall of them!”
The Trojans charged. They had to get past me before they could reach Magro and my men. A dozen spears against my one sword. I shifted to my left, wishing I hadn’t been foolish enough to throw away my shield. I barely avoided the first spear point aimed at my belly and hacked at another spear, cutting its haft almost in two with my iron blade. I backed away another step and then stepped back once more— onto empty air.
As I tottered on the edge of the platform another spear came thrusting at me. I banged its bronze head with the metal cuff around my right wrist, deflecting it enough to save my skin. But the motion sent me tumbling off the platform. I turned a full somersault in midair and somehow managed to land on my feet. The impact buckled my knees and I rolled on the bare dirt of the street. A spear thudded into the ground scant fingers’ widths from me. I saw a pair of archers aiming their arrows at me and ducked behind the corner of a house before they could fire.
Looking up, I could see, against the brightening morning sky, Paris and his men rushing along the wall toward the spot where the siege tower stood. My undersized squad of Hatti soldiers were battling the Trojans while Odysseos and his men clambered over the wall’s battlements and joined the struggle. But dozens more Trojans, roused so rudely from their sleep, were scurrying up ladders and rushing along the platform to overwhelm them. We needed a diversion, something to draw off the Trojan reinforcements.
I sprinted down the narrow alley between houses until I found a door. I kicked it open. A woman screamed in sudden terror as I stamped in, sword in hand. She cowered in a corner of her kitchen, her arms around two small children who huddled against her, wide-eyed with fright. As I strode toward them they all shrieked and ran along the wall, screeching and skittering like mice, then bolted through the open door. I let them go.
A small cook fire smoldered in the hearth. I yanked down the flimsy curtains that separated the kitchen from the next room and tossed them into the fire. It flared into open flame. Then I smashed a wooden chair and fed it into the blaze. Striding into the next room, I grabbed straw bedding and threadbare blankets and added them to the fire.
Two houses, three, and then a whole row of them I set ablaze. People were screaming and shouting. Men and women alike raced toward the fire sloshing buckets of water drawn from the fountain at the end of the street.
Satisfied that the fire would grow and occupy more and more of the Trojans, I started up the nearest ladder to return to the battle on the platform. Achaians were pouring over the parapet now and the Trojans were giving way. I leaped at them from the rear, yelling out to Magro. He heard me and led what was left of my men to my side, cutting a bloody swath through the defending Trojans.
“The watchtower by the Scaean Gate,” I shouted, pointing with my reddened sword. “We’ve got to take it and open the gate.”
We fought along the length of the wall, meeting the ill-prepared Trojans as they came up in knots of five or ten or a dozen and driving away those we didn’t kill. The fire I had started was spreading to other houses now, a pall of black smoke