The Hittite - Ben Bova [9]
Troy!
The city was built on a dark bluff, and beyond it I could see the glittering silver of the sea. It had to be Troy, it could be no other, I told myself. We had reached our destination at last.
Five armed soldiers keeping watch over fewer than a dozen woodcutters. The soldiers looked young, callow. I decided we could afford a peaceful approach.
“On your feet, all of you, and follow me,” I said to my men in a low voice. “That’s Troy there in the distance. We’re almost there.”
Magro huffed with disbelief. “Don’t tell me we’ll sleep under a roof to night.”
I grinned at him as I hefted Zarton’s spear. “Come on.”
The young spearmen stiffened with surprise as we stepped out of the foliage and presented ourselves. They gripped their long bronze-tipped spears and backed away from us a few steps. We were twelve to their five.
The loudmouthed whip master fell silent. The woodcutters stopped their work and gaped at us. They were sweating, filthy, bare to the waist, mostly emaciated old men barely strong enough to lift an ax. They stared about wildly, as if they would break and run at the slightest excuse.
“Is that city Troy?” I asked, pointing with my right hand. I gripped the spear in my left, of course.
“Who are you?” one of the spearmen demanded, his youthful voice cracking with surprise and fear. “What are you doing here?”
I barely understood him. He spoke a dialect that I had never heard before, heavy and guttural. It had been many months since anyone had spoken Hatti to us; we had learned the local language as we trekked across the land.
“ We are Hatti soldiers, from far to the east. We seek the city of Troy.”
It took some while, but gradually I made them understand that we meant them no harm. The young spearmen told me that Troy was under siege by a huge army of Achaians, kings and princes of a hundred cities from the far side of the Aegean, or so he claimed. They themselves were part of the besieging Achaian army, sent out to guard this pitiful band of foragers who were gathering firewood. A pretty poor army, I thought.
“You can’t enter the city,” the young leader of the spearmen told me. “The High King Agamemnon would never allow trained warriors to pass through his lines.”
We had arrived in the middle of a war. Where my wife and sons might be was anyone’s guess.
“Then I must see this Agamemnon,” I said.
“See the High King?” the spearman’s voice squeaked with awe.
“Yes, if he is the leader of your army.”
“But he’s the High King! He speaks only to princes and other kings.”
“He will want to speak to me,” I said, with a confidence I did not truly feel. “I am an officer in the army of the Hatti. I can be of great service to him.”
In truth, the spearman was little more than a beardless youth. The thought of going before his High King seemed to fill him with terror. At last he called one of the wood-loaders, a scrawny, knobby-kneed old man with a mangy, unkempt dirty gray beard and bald head shining with sweat.
“Poletes,” the youth commanded, his voice still fluttering slightly, “take these men to the camp and turn them over to the High King’s lieutenant.”
The old man nodded eagerly, glad to be free of his heavy work, and led us down toward the slow-flowing river.
“That’s the plain of Ilios,” said Poletes, pointing to the other side of the river as we followed its winding bank.
His voice was surprisingly strong and deep for such a wizened old gnome. His face was hollow-cheeked beneath its grime, with eyes that bulged like a frog’s. He wore nothing but a filthy rag around his loins. Even in the fading light of the dying day I could see his ribs and the bumps of his spine poking out beneath his nut-brown skin. There were welts from a whip across his back, too.
“You are Hittites?” he asked me as we walked slowly along.
“Yes,” I said. “In our tongue we call ourselves Hatti.”
“The Hittites are a powerful