Antiphones shrugged. “Agamemnon will come, anyway. What else do you see?”
“All around us, to the east, west, and south, I see a wide plain, ideal for cavalry warfare. The Trojan Horse would destroy any troops exposed on this plain. None could stand against them.” As Polites gazed at the city, Antiphones saw his expression change.
“What is it?” the big man asked.
“The Trojan Horse,” Polites answered. “Thousands of horses. We could not stable them in the upper city. There would not be enough feed. Nor could we leave them in the lower town and the barracks there. What if the town fell?”
“Now you are thinking,” Antiphones told him, though the problem had not occurred to him before. The Trojan Horse was a mobile army, best suited to fast movement, surprising enemy forces. It would be useless in a siege. Fear touched his heart then.
Polites was staring intently at the land around the city and down to the Bay of Troy. “We will need more horsemen,” he said. “Outriders and scouts. Hektor and his men will have to remain outside the city, constantly moving, then hitting the enemy where least expected.” Polites’ brow furrowed. “How, then, can we supply them with food and fresh weapons, arrows and spears?”
“You are going too fast for me,” Antiphones told him. “How can we survive with our army outside the city?”
“Not all of the army. Only the Trojan Horse. We can still man the walls with infantry and archers and sally out with our regiments when the occasion permits. We must have hidden supplies out in the far hills and the woods where the enemy will not venture,” he continued, warming to his theme. “And we will need a way to communicate with Hektor so that we can link strategically.”
“You are a wonder, little brother,” Antiphones said admiringly. Polites blushed at the compliment.
“But,” Antiphones said, sobering a little, “we cannot rely solely on the Trojan Horse. It is our spear and our shield, but even the strongest shield can be shattered.”
“Do you believe Agamemnon will bring his own cavalry? Surely not!”
“No, the strength of the Mykene is in their infantry. The Mykene phalanx is the best in the world, experienced and disciplined. We will not want to be drawn into any pitched battles with them.”
“But Brother,” Polites argued, “we have the finest infantry. Surely the Scamandrian and Heraklion regiments and your own Ileans are a match for any army. They are all doughty warriors.”
Antiphones shook his head. “With the exception of the Eagles, we have no foot soldiers to compare with the Mykene,” he admitted. “And our infantry is buttressed by Hittite and Phrygian mercenaries, with their flimsy armor. The Mykene would cut through them like a scythe through long grass. Only Hektor and the Horse can defeat the elite warriors of Agamemnon. The Mykene are the finest fighters, but heavily armored, they are slow to react. Only a cavalry charge will break their formation and scatter them.”
Polites nodded. “But surely Father’s Eagles would be a match for them.”
“Yes, but there are only three hundred Eagles. The Mykene infantry will number in the thousands, and most of them will be veterans of a score of wars. They are deadly, Polites, and they know how to win. They get a lot of practice.”
Antiphones gazed up at the city, his mood bleak. Since his brush with death he had thanked the gods daily for his continued life and attacked each day with vigor, determined to wring the last dregs of enjoyment from it. But now, for the first time in years, blackness threatened to engulf him. What had started as a mild intellectual exercise, discussing the defenses of Troy with his brother, had blossomed into black dread for the future. He could see in his mind’s eye enemy camps on the plain of the Scamander, the river running with blood, the lower town empty and burned, Mykene troops clamoring at the walls of Troy.
Polites said encouragingly, “We also know how to win, Brother. And the great walls are impregnable. The city cannot be taken.”
Antiphones turned to him. “If the Mykene reach the walls, Polites, then Troy cannot stand. There are only two wells in the city. Most of our water comes from the Scamander and the Simoeis. And how long can we feed all our people? We could not last the summer. And eventually there would be a traitor. There always is. Dardanos was not taken by siege, remember. It needed just one traitor, and the enemy troops merely walked in the gates.”
He fell silent. I was the traitor, he thought, the last time Agamemnon tried to take Troy. Through my arrogance I almost caused the death of the king and the fall of Troy to a foreign power. Only the courage of the hero Argurios prevented that. Two Trojans plotted the fall of Troy, and a Mykene saved the city. How the gods enjoy such elegant irony, he thought.
Antiphones smiled grimly, trying to rouse himself from gloom, cursing his self-pity. “If only I had remained fat, I could have sat behind the Scaean Gate, and all the troops in Mykene could never have opened it.”
Polites laughed. “Then we should head for home and a mountain of honey cakes.”
The big woman trudged through the streets of the lower town, a basket of honey cakes on her arm. As she walked, many of the older traders called out greetings. She knew them alclass="underline" Tobios the jeweler with his henna-dyed hair, Palicos the cloth merchant, Rasha the spindly meat seller, and more. To them she was still Big Red, the servant of Aphrodite.
But those days were gone now. She was married to Banokles, a soldier of the Trojan Horse. She smiled. A general now, no less. Thoughts of her husband warmed her as she walked through the morning cold.
When young and beautiful, she had dreamed of marrying a rich man, tall and handsome, and of living in a palace with servants to tend her needs. There would be perfumed baths and jeweled robes. Her husband’s adoration would shine brighter than the summer sun, and she would walk through Troy like a queen of legend. Such were the dreams of the young. The woman of those times had believed she never would grow old. There never would be a day when men did not desire her, when one glance from those violet eyes did not capture their hearts.
Yet that day had come, creeping unnoticed through the shadows of her life. The rich clients had fallen away, and Red had found herself plying her trade among foreign sailors or common soldiers or among the poorer merchants and travelers.
Until the night Banokles had come into her life.
Red cut through the alleys toward her small neat house in the Street of Potters, passing on the way the square where she first had seen the blond-bearded Mykene soldier. He had been roaring drunk and in the company of thieves and cutthroats. He had called out, then staggered toward her. “By the gods,” he had said, “I think you are the most beautiful woman I ever saw.” Fumbling in the pouch by his side, he had pulled out a silver ring, which he had thrust into her hand. She had told him she was finished with work for the night, but it had not concerned him. “That is for your beauty alone,” he had told her.
Despite her years of dealing with men and their hungers, she had been touched by the gesture. And she had felt sorry for the drunken fool. She knew the men with him. They were robbers, and before the night was over they would kill or cripple him for the rings he carried.
But she had left him there and walked, just as she had this morning, to the house of the baker, Krenio.
Later, retracing her steps, she had braced herself for the sight of the soldier dead on the stones. When finally she had reached the square, she had seen him sitting quietly and drinking, the thieves sprawled out around him.