When the news was received at G.H.Q. everyone was very down in the mouth, and next day the Greeks again got the worst of it in battle. They might have been scuppered for good had not the Immortals once more taken a hand. Hera pinched Aphrodite's girdle, knowing that no male could resist anyone who wore it. Then she sidled up to her husband. Somewhat later, Zeus felt so tired that he fell asleep and, as Hera had intended, missed what was happening down below. Poseidon meanwhile, had taken the form of Calchas and had put new heart into the Greeks. The terrible Hector was temporarily knocked out, the Trojans took to their heels, and Poseidon, yelling: 'Up, Guards, and at 'em,' led the Greeks in pursuit. But Zeus woke up just in time, realized that Hera had made a monkey out of him, gave her. a smack in the puss, ordered Poseidon back into the sea, then sent Apollo to revive Hector and restore the situation.
With Apollo's aid, the Trojans drove the Greeks right back to their ships and began to set fire to them. Achilles and his pal Patroclus were looking on from a distance, and at last Patroclus could bear the sight no longer. Achilles still refused to lift a finger, but he reluctantly a'greed that Patroclus should lead out the Myrmidons, if only to prevent the ships, without which the Greeks could not get home, being burnt to cinders. Being much attached to Patroclus, Achilles lent him his own custom-made suit of armour and his Mark IX chariot to do the job in. In consequence, when Patroclus came charging out with the Myrmidons behind him, everyone thought he was Achilles.
At the sight of him the Trojans panicked and the Greeks chivvied them right up to the walls of the city. They might even have got in if Apollo hadn't given Patroclus a biff that half stunned him. Hector, being on hand, took advantage of this to slay the Greek and strip him of his armour. It was only after a desperate fight that the Greeks managed to rescue his body and carry it back to Achilles.
At the sight of his dead friend, Achilles nearly burst himself with grief and rage. He wept all night and even Briseis, whom Agamemnon had sent back to him, could not stop him crying. But his mama turned up and cheered him a trifle by telling him that she had got Hephaestus to make a new suit of absolutely super armour for him in which to avenge his buddy.
In the morning he put it on, went along to G.H.Q., buried the hatchet with Agamemnon and demanded instant battle. Led by him again the Greeks attacked and hour after hour made mincemeat of the Trojans. There were so many dead that the river Scamander was choked with their corpses and overflowed with blood. Achilles gave scores of them the works. Aeneas and Hector were only saved from his fury by Poseidon's temporarily changing sides and sending a mist to hide them. Athene heaved a rock the size of a house that sent Ares sprawling over an acre of ground, then as Aphrodite tried to help him up Athene gave her a black eye. Hera pulled Artemis's hair until she screamed. The Trojans knew they had had it and ran like rabbits for the shelter of their walls. Apollo held the gate for them and only Hector, still game to fight, remained outside.
But he wasn't all that game. As Achilles leapt at him he took to his heels. Three times the Greek chased him right round the city. Tough as those boys were, one imagines that after that they must have been a bit breathless. Pulling up, Hector tried to make a last-minute pact that whichever of them survived should see the other decently buried; but Achilles swore he'd feed Hector's carcase to the dogs, then he killed and stripped him. Not content with that he bored holes through his feet, tied them with leather thongs to the boot of his chariot and dragged the naked body bouncing up and down full-tilt round the walls of Troy, while Hector's parents looked on, yelling: 'Have a heart you cad!' and lugged their hair out by the handful.
Even Hector's death did not end the war. Old Priam sent out an S O S for help to everyone he knew. The Amazon Queen, Penthesilea, responded by bringing an army of her tough babies down from the north. Achilles jabbed his spear right through her; but afterwards, when he wrenched off her helmet and saw what a good-looker she was, he was sorry for what he had done. Priam's nephew, Memnon, then arrived on the scene with a useful contingent from Egypt, but Achilles also cut short this young Pharaoh's career.
At last it became Achilles's turn. The Trojans had apparently got hold of a few of the arrows left by Hercules that had been dipped in the Hydra's poisonous blood. Paris fitted one of them to his bow and, with Apollo guiding his aim, managed to land it in Achilles's vulnerable heel, so he died ingloriously and had a very uncomfortable death. Unfortunately, too, by one of those silly wills, he had left his armour to 'the bravest' of his pals. Naturally half a dozen champs said at once: 'Of course, poor old Achie meant it for me.' To prevent bloodshed, Agamemnon called in the Trojan prisoners and asked their opinion. They voted Odysseus Champ No. 1, upon which Ajax became so jealous that in a fit of apoplectic rage he committed hara-kiri.
The loss of two of their best fire-eating types was such a bad set-back for the Greeks that most of them declared that they had reached the limit and meant to beat it for home, but Odysseus persuaded them to stick around for just a bit longer to try out a brainwave he had had. This was the famous hollow horse on wheels about which every schoolboy knows. It was made of wood and large enough to hold twelve men in its belly. When it was finished, Odysseus, Diomede, Pyrrhus and nine others shut themselves up inside and some of the troops dragged it up to within a stone's throw of the city gates. Then the Greeks got their ships afloat and sailed away bag and baggage.
Naturally the Trojans were all terrifically cock-a-hoop. They came streaming out, the poorer types to scrounge round the site of the Greek camp for any tins of bully beef that might have been left behind and the better-off to crowd round the Wooden Horse, airing their views about it. If Odysseus and his buddies could hear the suggestions made they must have been jolly sorry that they had ever put on this Commando act. Some of the Trojans wanted to burn the Horse, and others to push it over a high cliff. They were just about to break it open when a cry went up that
a Greek who'd missed his boat had been found hiding in
the bushes.
This was a young fellow named Sinon. He said that, while Agamemnon had been packing for home, the seer, Calchas, had told him that, if he wanted a favourable voyage, just as Iphigenia had been sacrificed before the outward trip so someone else must be sacrificed before the homeward one, and they had picked on him, Sinon; but he had managed to do a bunk. Now, of course, he was equally in a dither that, having been caught by the Trojans, he would be done in by them.
But the Trojans were in such good heart that they said not to worry, gave him a snorter to steady him up a bit and asked him about the Wooden Horse. He said that was another of old Calchas's ideas. The seer had had them make the Horse in honour of Athene, because she had told him that if it were left outside the walls of Troy she would fight on their side when they returned to have another crack at the city next year. He added that the reason it had been made too large to go through the gate was so that the Trojans could not take it inside to her temple, which would have caused her to give her favour to them.
Taking all this for gospel, the idiot Trojans started to knock part of their wall down so that they could draw the Horse into the city; but an old buffer named Laocoon, who was a priest of Apollo, ran out crying: 'Hi! Stop that. Even the gifts of the Greeks are poison.'