Banokles asked, “Are you going to keep that on?” pointing at the distinctive Mykene armor. “You don’t want one of our lads killing you by mistake. That would be annoying.”
Kalliades grinned and sent a soldier to fetch his own armor. Then he wearily followed Banokles up the steps to the top of the ramparts. The palace walls were twice the height of a man. The attackers would need ladders, but they had had plenty of time to make them.
“Well, strategos,” he commented to Banokles, looking at the waiting soldiers. “What is our plan?”
“I spoke to the men,” Banokles replied, “and told them to kill every bastard who comes at them and keep on killing until they are all dead.”
“Good plan,” Kalliades answered. “I like it. It has the advantage of simplicity.” He smiled and felt all his tension ease away. Banokles was right. They had reached the end now, and there were no more decisions to make. They would fight, and they would live or die.
Banokles grinned back at him and shrugged. “Everyone likes a plan they can understand.”
“How many are we?”
“Fewer than three hundred now, mostly with wounds. Fifty or so Eagles still. And some Trojan Horse. We could do with Hektor here now.”
He lowered his voice to a loud whisper. “And there’s that woman.” He nodded his head, looking along the wall to where Penthesileia stood, bow in hand, staring out at the city. She was wearing a high helm as well as the breastplate. Gazing at her profile, Kalliades thought she looked like the goddess Athene garbed for war.
“Hillas reckons she’s a wonder,” Banokles confided. “Can shoot the balls off a flea at fifty paces.”
“Hillas does? This is the same Hillas who thinks women warriors should be buried alive for their insolence?”
“I know. I wouldn’t have believed it, either. Perhaps he’s in love,” Banokles mused. “Though she’s plain as a rock and thin as a blade. I don’t like bony women. I mean, what’s the point?”
Only half listening, Kalliades sat down with his back to the wall and yawned. He was tired beyond reason, his wounded leg ached, and he was heavy of heart. He never had wished to be a Trojan. The warriors of the Lion’s Hall always had despised the armies of the City of Gold. True warriors were lions among the sheep, they believed, taking the battle to the enemy in the name of the war god Ares. The soldiers of Troy hid behind their high walls, resting on the riches of Priam.
Banokles had been right to ask, Who are we fighting for? There was no treasure and no king, and the high walls had been rendered meaningless.
Kalliades thought back to the day when, as a child, he had hidden in the flax field as brutal men had raped and killed his sister. On that day he had vowed to avenge her by seeking out such men and killing them. He had joined the forces of the Mykene still firm in his intention. Yet somehow over the years his vow had been forgotten, and he had found that he was fighting side by side with such brutes. Kalliades never had raped a woman or killed a child, but many of his comrades had, men he was proud to call friends.
Rescuing Piria from the pirates had changed his life in many ways. It had made him remember his pledge in the flax field. And he knew he could never turn away from it again.
“In answer to your question—” he said to Banokles.
“What question?”
“You asked me what we are fighting for. That little boy. Astyanax is king of Troy now. We’re fighting for him. But not because he is the king. We fight today for all the women and old men relying on us in the palace, people who cannot fight for themselves. We will use our swords to protect the weak, not to kill them and take what they own. That is for lesser men.”
Banokles shrugged. “If you say so,” he answered. Then he squinted into the growing light. “Here they come!” he said.
Kalliades rolled to his feet and risked a glance over the crenellated wall. His heart sank. They were still facing a horde. It seemed like the hundreds they had killed at the Scaean Gate had counted for nothing. At least most of the defenders had had a night’s rest while the attackers had been carousing and killing.
He heard the clatter of ladders hitting the other side of the wall.
Suddenly Banokles stood up and roared at the enemy, “I am Banokles! Come at me and die, you scum!” A volley of arrows soared over the wall. One shaft grazed his ruined ear, and he ducked down quickly, grinning.
Looking at each other, they both waited a few heartbeats, then as one leaped up to face the enemy. A huge Mykene warrior had reached the top of the ladder, and the sword of Argurios ripped into his face. Kalliades sent a reverse cut into the bearded face of another attacker, then glanced along the outside of the wall. There were only twenty or so ladders to this section. All we have to do, he thought, is kill twenty warriors, then keep on doing it until the attack fails.
To his right Banokles swept his sword through the throat of an attacker, then brained another. A warrior with a braided beard came over the wall, an ax in one hand. Banokles let him come and then, as he cleared the ramparts, ducked and plunged a sword into the man’s belly. As he fell, Banokles stabbed him in the back. He grabbed the man’s ax and swung it at the next attacker, smashing through his shoulder and breastplate.
Arrows soared over the wall. Most were too high, and they flew harmlessly into the courtyard, but two defenders went down, and one shaft stuck high in Banokles’ breastplate.
To his left Kalliades saw that three Mykene warriors had forced their way to the ramparts, giving the enemy a foothold and allowing more to follow. Kalliades charged the group, cutting one down instantly and shoulder charging the second, who crashed down, his head bouncing against the ramparts wall. The third man lunged with his sword at Kalliades’ belly. A Royal Eagle blocked the blade and slashed his sword through the attacker’s neck. The second man tried to rise, and Kalliades plunged his blade down through his collarbone and into his chest. He glanced at the Eagle who had helped him and saw it was Polydorus.
“For the king!” the young aide shouted, gutting another attacker and hacking at the neck of another.
And the battle raged on.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE TROJAN WOMEN
Andromache laid her bundle of arrows on the balcony wall. She dragged her unruly hair back with a leather strip, then dried her damp palms on her tunic. She looked along the palace balcony at the other women. Some were watching her, nervously following her example; others stared transfixed at the ferocious battle taking place across the palace courtyard. It could not last much longer, they all knew. Their gallant warriors defending the ramparts had beaten back wave after wave of enemy attacks. Now, in the sultry afternoon, Andromache knew by the chill in her bones that it was nearly the end.
She watched stretcher bearers, most of them old men, struggle back to the palace with their burdens. Why? she wondered. Our wounded soldiers are just being saved for a later death, when the enemy breaks into the palace. We cannot hold the palace wall. It is not high enough, and we do not have enough men. We cannot hold the palace. She closed her eyes. Despair threatened to overwhelm her.
“Lady, can you help me?” Her young handmaid Anio was struggling with the leather breastplate she had been given. Though intended for a small man, it was too wide, the straps falling off her thin shoulders.
Patiently Andromache unthreaded the straps and then tied them closer together. “There,” she decided, “that’s better. You look like a tortoise who’s been given too big a shell.”
Anio smiled, and one girl laughed; Andromache felt her tension ease. There were ten Women of the Horse left, women and girls as young as fifteen who had not fled the city. Some had stayed because they had no family and nowhere to go, others because their families had remained, convinced that the great walls would never fall. As Kalliades had ordered, she had brought them to the high palace balcony overlooking the courtyard. Only Penthesileia had ignored those orders and gone to the ramparts to fight with the Thrakian bowmen.