Kalliades gutted one enemy warrior and parried a blow from a second, backhanding his shield into the man’s face. He glanced desperately at the gates again. Enemy warriors in the stolen armor of the Trojan Horse had their hands to the locking bar and were attempting to lift it. Kalliades slashed and cut, pushed and shoved his way toward them. He brained one of the men with his shield and threw his weight onto the locking bar.
He realized that young Boros was at his side and yelled, “Help me here, soldier!”
Boros grinned at him, then punched him hard on the jaw.
As Kalliades staggered back, Boros kicked him in the face. Kalliades went flying, dazed, barely holding to consciousness. Bright lights were whirling around his head. He lay stunned, watching in horror as more of the enemy horsemen grabbed the great oak locking bar and heaved it off its brackets. The high gates started to open slowly and then more quickly as they were pushed from the outside.
And the enemy poured in.
Kalliades, lying shielded in the space behind one of the open doors, tried to get to his feet, shaking his head to clear it. Then he realized that the flaxen-haired soldier was standing looking down at him. As Kalliades tried to rise, the young man placed the point of his sword at Kalliades’ throat, pushing him back to the ground.
“Boros!” he whispered.
“Boros died long ago, at the battle for the Scamander,” the soldier replied triumphantly. “I am Asios, first son of Alektruon, loyal servant of Agamemnon King, and I am here to avenge my father and bring the proud Trojans to their knees.”
He leaned forward, pressing on the sword at Kalliades’ throat. Blood started to flow. Kalliades could not speak or move.
“It was so easy to take that idiot’s place when his entire company had been wiped out and when the general of his regiment couldn’t even be bothered to learn his soldiers’ names. And it amused me to fool the great Kalliades, the thinker, the planner—the traitor to Mykene. Die, then, traitor!”
His face hardened, and he tensed to thrust his sword through Kalliades’ neck. At that last moment Kalliades saw Banokles step up behind the boy, sword raised. With one ferocious sweep of his blade he beheaded him. Hitting the gate, the head bounced onto the ground.
Banokles put out his hand and dragged Kalliades to his feet. “He was talkative,” he observed. “Always a mistake. Are you all right?” Kalliades nodded, swallowing blood, still unable to speak.
“Come on, then,” Banokles said grimly. “We’ve got a city to die for.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE LAST BARRICADE
With enemy warriors hard on their heels, Kalliades and Banokles ran up the stone steps to the west of the Scaean Gate. On the top of the wall Banokles nodded to his comrade, then turned and raced away. He was heading for the next steps down so that he could work his way around behind the new barricade. Kalliades would stay and ensure that the wall was secure.
A Mykene warrior, heavily armored, appeared close behind him at the top of the steps. Two Trojan soldiers were waiting, eager for a chance at the enemy. One hacked at the warrior’s sword arm, and the other lunged for his throat. He fell, blood gouting from his neck. He clattered down the stairway, knocking down the man behind him.
Kalliades grinned at the two defenders. “Pace yourselves,” he ordered. “There will be plenty more.”
Looking down from the wall, he surveyed the killing ground inside the gates.
The Trojan generals had been planning this day for a long time. If Agamemnon’s forces won the freedom of Troy’s streets, the only sanctuary for the city’s defenders would be the king’s palace. Because the best hope lay in keeping the enemy confined at the gate for as long as possible, soldiers had labored throughout the summer to demolish buildings high in the upper city, taking them apart stone by stone. The stones had been used to fill in the roads and alleyways all around the Scaean Gate, blocking them to twice the height of a man.
Fire gullies had been dug all around the circle of open ground inside the gate. They had been filled with anything that would burn: brushwood, the branches and twigs of dead plants, and fuel left from Hektor’s funeral pyre. Amphorae filled with the last oil in the city stood ready at points around the killing ground.
As the blood-hungry invaders poured in through the gate, they found themselves trapped in a space less than forty paces across, with the high walls of stone buildings all around. There were just three ways available to them: up the steps to the battlements on either side of the gate, up the steep stairs inside the Great Tower of Ilion, and straight ahead.
Straight ahead was the only road left unblocked, the stone avenue that led to the heights of the city and Priam’s palace. Polites had ordered the entrance to the road barricaded on both sides, with only a central gap remaining for daily traffic.
It was there that defenders were converging from all parts of the city.
Kalliades turned to the battlement door in the wall of the great tower. It would be easy to hold. To get to it the enemy had to climb the steep tower steps in darkness. When they reached the door, they would be emerging from dark into light, through a narrow doorway above a high drop. One steady warrior could defend the door all day, sending enemy after enemy falling to break his bones on the stone floor far below.
There were a hundred men holding that part of the wall. Kalliades knew that not one of them would fall or step back without a fight to the last.
After the long summer of waiting it was almost a relief that this day had arrived. Kalliades looked around him and breathed deeply. The air seemed fresher, the colors clearer. This is what you know, he told himself, the only life you have ever known. If you are not a warrior, what are you, Kalliades?
An enemy warrior appeared at the tower door. A Scamandrian soldier leaped forward and lunged at his chest. The Mykene had his shield up, but the force of the blow unbalanced him. He fell back into darkness with a cry. Any invaders braving the tower steps would have to pass a mounting pile of dead and injured men, Kalliades thought with grim satisfaction. In time that would wear on their resolve.
He surveyed the scene below. More and more invaders were pushing in through the Scaean Gate, eager to get in on the action, and the killing ground was packed with armed men. The Trojan defenders had fallen back, as planned, to the narrowest section of the great road. There just thirty men, Eagles all, were facing the main thrust of the enemy attack. Behind them the gap in the barricade they were defending became narrower as soldiers labored to close it with stones, timber, and rubble.
Kalliades watched with pride as the Eagles battled to hold back the enemy horde. When ordered, one by one the warriors at each end of the line stepped back and slipped through the gap. Finally just three Eagles remained. Kalliades heard the order for them to retreat. Instead, as one, they charged! They were cut down swiftly, but the gap behind them was plugged, and the barricade secured.
Then an order was given. The brushwood was doused with oil, and flaming torches were thrown in from the heights of the surrounding buildings. Within heartbeats the fire had run along the length of the gullies, the oil-fueled flames leaping high and setting alight anything close by. The enemy soldiers nearest to the gullies tried desperately to get back from the flames, but more warriors were pushing in through the gates behind them. The padded linen kilt of a Kretan soldier caught fire, and within moments he was a screaming, writhing human torch, blundering into his comrades and setting them ablaze. Other men near the fire gullies were set on fire as the leaping flames were blown about by gusty winds.
For a moment it looked as though the flames would jump from man to man, dooming them all. But the disciplined Mykene warriors were not to be panicked. Those armed with lances used them ruthlessly to kill the burning men or hold them at bay until they dropped dying to the ground. Dozens of burned and blackened soldiers lay moaning on the stones, but the fires had been stopped.