Banokles looked at him in amazement. “Is what a cow, you moron?” he asked.
“Over there.” The young soldier was pointing toward the tomb of Ilos, where a stray bullock, destined for sacrifice, was chewing grass.
“I meant in the distance beyond the Scamander,” Kalliades said. “There is a cloud of dust, probably riders, maybe a battle.”
The soldier squinted his eyes and confessed, “I don’t know.”
Banokles suggested, “Perhaps it’s a herd of pigs being driven to Troy for roasting.” He frowned. “They’d have to be invisible pigs to get past the enemy. But,” he argued with himself, “we cannot open the gates, so how will they get in? Then they must be invisible poxy pigs with poxy wings, ready to fly over the walls straight onto spits.”
Kalliades smiled. Boros, apparently encouraged by his ramblings, said to Banokles, “General, I have a request.”
“What?” Banokles grunted without interest.
“When we have won this war, I would like to return to my family in Rhodos.”
“Why tell me? I don’t care what you do.” Banokles scowled at him.
Boros regarded the general uncertainly as he would an unknown and possibly dangerous dog, then said, “But I have no rings, sir. I have been with the Scamandrians more than a year, but I have only been paid once, at the Feast of Persephone, when I received three silvers and six coppers. That is all gone now, and my brother’s rings were plundered from his body. I cannot return to Rhodos unless we are paid.”
Banokles shook his head. “I don’t know why you’re worrying about getting home. We’ll probably all die here, anyway,” he said. “Of hunger,” he added gloomily.
Kalliades grinned and clapped his friend on the back. “What have I told you about motivating the men, General?” he asked.
Banokles grunted. “Well, there’s no point worrying about poxy rings when we’ve got these goat-shagging lumps of cow turd to deal with first.” He waved at the enemy camps below them.
Banokles was right. Besides, Kalliades knew there was nothing left in Priam’s treasury for the regular troops. The mercenaries from Phrygia, Zeleia, and the Hittite borders had been paid. Trojan troops, he thought, are expected to die for Troy without pay.
“If we live, I will see you get rings enough,” he promised Boros, knowing his promise was probably meaningless.
“More of the enemy have left,” the lad commented. “That is a good sign, isn’t it?” he asked hopefully.
“It is not a bad sign” was all Kalliades could say. They had watched as the Myrmidons had marched out along with two other armies, but he could not tell whose. He wondered at the political infighting between the western kings that had brought this about. Achilles had been poisoned, but by whom? It certainly had not been Hektor. Even the enemy did not believe that. His body had been returned to the city with honor by the soldiers of Thessaly. Had Achilles been murdered by someone on his own side? It was a mystery Kalliades knew he was unlikely ever to solve.
“What will you do if you return to Rhodos?” he asked Boros.
“I will join my father, who is a goldsmith. He will train me in his craft.”
Kalliades raised his eyebrows. “Great Zeus, lad, if my father were a goldsmith, I would have stayed at home and learned his trade and not sold my skills with a sword.”
“My mother is a Trojan woman, and she told me I must fight for the honor of our city. And she wanted me to find out if Echios was still alive. He was her firstborn, you see. She had not seen him for fifteen years.”
Banokles narrowed his eyes against the sunlight and commented, “Horsemen.”
The far dust cloud had resolved itself into two dust clouds, and both were heading for Troy. They were moving fast, as if one group of horsemen were chasing the other. Kalliades leaned forward on the battlement wall, frustrated by his inability to see more clearly at that distance. He glanced at Boros and saw that the young man was peering in the wrong direction. Kalliades moved as if to hit the lad on the left side of his face, pulling his punch at the last moment. Boros did not even flinch.
“Boros,” he said. Boros turned his head, then jumped when he saw Kalliades’ fist close to his face.
“Can you see anything out of your left eye?”
The lad shook his head. “No. I used to be able to see light and shadow, but that has gone now. Everything is dark. I was injured in Thraki, you see.”
Kalliades knew that a one-eyed soldier could not last long in a pitched battle. It was remarkable the lad was still alive.
He turned his attention back to the horsemen in the distance. There were two groups of riders. In front were about fifty men being chased at a furious pace by maybe two hundred. They had crossed the Scamander and were racing across the plain toward the city. The men on the walls shouted to their comrades to come and watch the race, and below them enemy soldiers were being ordered from tents and from the shadows of ruined houses. They were arming themselves quickly, putting on sword belts and helms, collecting lances and spears, bows and quivers of arrows.
Then someone cried out, “The Trojan Horse!”
Now Kalliades could see that the riders in front bore the black-and-white crested helms of Hektor’s cavalry. They were lying low on their horses’ necks, urging their mounts on with whipped reins and shouts. The chasing horsemen were hampered by the dust being thrown up by their quarry and had fallen back some way as both groups galloped up the slope from the plain toward the city.
As the front riders thundered across the wooden bridge into the lower town, enemy soldiers started loosing arrows at them, and from all sides lances and spears were thrown. Some appeared to hit their targets, and two horsemen on the edge of the group went down. The soldiers watching from the walls were yelling to urge their riders on.
Kalliades found his heart in his mouth as the leading horsemen galloped up through the ruined town. Come on, he thought. Come on, you can make it! The enemy riders seemed to have slowed further.
“Open the gates!” someone shouted, and the cry was picked up all along the walls. “Open the gates quickly. Open the gates! Let them in!”
Then realization hit Kalliades like a blow to the face. His blood went cold. “No!” he shouted. Pushing desperately through the ranks of cheering soldiers, he raced along the wall to the battlements above the Scaean Gate. Below him men were gathering eagerly to lift the massive locking bar and open the gates.
“No!” he bellowed down at them. “Stop! Don’t open the gates!” But his voice could not be heard above the shouts of hundreds of men, and he ran down the stone steps, waving his arms and yelling frantically.
“Don’t open the gates! By all the gods, don’t open the gates!”
But the massive oak doors already were groaning open, and with split-second timing, the riders thundered through the gap. There were more than fifty of them, garbed in the armor of the Trojan Horse and armed with spears. Their horses’ hooves kicked up a storm of whirling dust as they slowed and circled inside the gates. Behind them the guards started to close the gates again.
They were heaving the locking bar back into place when one of them fell with a spear in his belly.
Kalliades drew his sword and ran for the nearest rider. He shouted, “Kill them! They’re the enemy!” and lanced his blade into the man’s side, behind his breastplate.
He saw a sword sweeping toward his head from another rider. He ducked under the horse’s belly and leaped up to spear the man from the other side. As the rider fell, Kalliades grabbed his shield.
He glimpsed Banokles beside him. His friend powered into the enemy horesemen, slashing and killing. Kalliades shouted to him, “Defend the gates!” But both of them were blocked from reaching the gates by the press of horses and riders.