Achilles (4 page)

But Scamander will not die. He rouses himself from his deepest fundament, draws up his strength … and heaves.

And heaves again. A terrible, dry retching as he throws the bits that choke him out onto his banks.

Sodden mangled corpses:

men,

horses,

tackle …

and again he can breathe and flow. Now he will drown the man who has hacked so many sons of Troy into his waters.

When the river roars at him Achilles jumps in, ready to take him on. Scamander clasps him, grabs him by the throat, and rises in a tower over his head.

Like a slab of rock over his head.

Like his funeral pile heaped over his head.

Water, the stuff of his mother, is now so heavy.

She never said this would happen: that he would die like a boy whose boat's turned over, his dead flesh waterlogged, teased apart by fish, buried at last in silt.

And Hector alive.

Summoning all his strength he rears, like Atlas rising to slide the heavens from his back. Moving through water he sees a tree – an elm – its trunk leaning out over the river. He grabs it with one arm and hauls himself up till he has wrapped his legs around. But the weight of Achilles and his heavenly armour is more than the roots of this tree can bear. They try to grip the earth they're dug in, send out new fingers to fasten into the bank. The tree doesn't want to drown either. It clings to the bank but the bank cannot hold on to itself and breaks away, clod by fat clod, ripping the sinews of root and fibre that bound it. It falls away like cake, a new island carried by the rushing river, Achilles still straddling the tree.

Achilles hurls himself towards the open wound of the bank and the River Scamander gathers itself up into a wall. So high it blots out the sun.

This wall of water comes after Achilles.

ZEUS HELP ME!

The cry hits target. Though Achilles is not his son –
because
Achilles is not his son – Zeus loves him. He sends his brother Poseidon and his grey-eyed brainchild Athene to clasp the man's hands and bear him up. They assure him he
will
kill Hector. Nothing can take this from him.

But Scamander won't let up. His wall of water's poised to crash down even on the gods. Zeus and Athene call on Hephaestus: ask him for fire.

Hephaestus lobs fire down and, for a moment that all who survived will remember for ever, a river of molten flame pours through the sky. As it meets land it roars into a blaze, romping over the heaped bodies that Achilles killed that morning, eating them whole.

Hungry still, it makes for the river; breathes on the water which shrinks, scalded, from its banks.

Scamander – a hot, narrow vein in a bed of baking mud – surrenders.

*   *   * 

T
HE
T
ROJAN
soldiers – what's left of them – are scuttling back behind the walls. How small they look in flight; men who even yesterday shone with power as they poured across the beach. The women watching from the ramparts see the small wounded dots hauling their way up the hill. Husband, brother, child. Something in the configuration of each moving mark is unmistakeable to eyes made sharp by love. Hephaestus' flames have eaten the dead. But the wounded are brought home on stretchers of shields or dragged, slumped across their companions' shoulders. The dust on the paths is rosy with blood. Men tumble through the gate. Men without arms, men with barely half a face, a hole where the nose was. One unstraps his helmet and, as he tugs it off, the skull flaps back and his brains slide down his neck.

QUICK!

CLOSE THE GATE. ACHILLES IS COMING.

Those who have only heard of Achilles would like to linger for a glimpse, but the men who press in push them back. They bundle their companions through. If only to die inside Troy's walls.

Priam orders them to close the great Scaean Gate before Achilles can reach it.

QUICK!

GET IN!

The huge leaves of the gate are pushed together, the enormous bolts heaved into place. For a moment they breathe in relief. But they know the end has begun.

Then someone says that Hector is still out there. The two of them. Out there.

They needn't have bothered to run. Achilles has no interest in any other Trojan now. He has just seen Hector from the plain – high on a boulder near the ramparts, in full view, surveying the land below.

As if spears, boulders and axes could not be hurled.

As if he were watching the sky for signs of weather.

Achilles reaches the wall and sees Hector outside the gates, an easy spear's flight away. They look at each other and, just for a moment, time stops, eyes blazing into eyes as each takes in the form and splendour of the other and thinks
It's him.
Then Achilles raises the great ash spear and Hector begins to run and the race, which both always knew would one day begin, begins.

Hector's feet are sure. They know these tracks, where they'll find scree, where the ground is firm. As he runs he remembers each part of his life: the bushes and rocks of his boyhood hideouts, the promontory he lay on one full night to learn the stars; the routes of his hunting, his cattle herding, the waterfall he led Andromache to when he wooed her. The stream of Astyanax's first bathing. The shallow rock pools where the women did the laundry before the war. He remembers, his life spread out before him like a giant sheet in the sun, the way ahead narrowing to a tunnel which he runs down.

The rhythm of their steps goes on for ever.

It makes no difference that Achilles does not know the terrain so well. He is strong as a stag. Inexhaustible. Hector can gain no ground. Three times they circle the city. Now Hector scans the walls for armed comrades who might occupy Achilles while he scales the battlements and escapes; but Achilles never lets him get close to the walls.

The Myrmidons press in. Stationed at various points in the circuit they follow Achilles as they can, keeping Hector running, blocking off his escapes. But if one of them raises a spear or a boulder Achilles glares him to a halt. No one will take this kill from him.

Athene is back with him – lucid and swift and not at all out of breath. She tells him again that Hector is his and promises to make him stop. Then, looking like Deiphoebus, she catches up with Hector who takes heart, happy that his dear brother has risked his life to join him. Ready now, he stops in his tracks, and turns.

Again Achilles' eyes meet Hector's. The Myrmidons stand back.

Hector promises an honourable deal: the winner will treat the other's body with respect and allow his people to fetch it for decent burial.

Achilles looks at the man who killed Patroclus and feels the hatred spread through his body, slowly, luxuriously, like cream. A sumptuous hatred that leaves no part of him unfilled.

‘No Hector. We meet as animals. What's left of you will go to the dogs.'

He lifts the great ash spear that even Patroclus could not hold. And throws.

Hector ducks. The spear pierces the ground. Immediately, unseen by Hector, Athene tweaks it out and hands it back to Achilles.

Now it is Hector's throw. Achilles' miss has cheered him. He casts his own great spear which lands, dead centre, in Achilles' Olympic shield.

But no god tweaks it out and he has no other spear.

Deiphoebus is nowhere to be seen.

Now he knows he has come to his death. He draws his huge sword and wields it with both hands.

Achilles takes his sword too. After the day's slaughter the divine blade still flashes like a sun. There is all the time he could ever want. He looks Hector over, scanning the armour that fits him so well, searching for a place to insert his blade. Like a lover taking in every inch of his beloved as they lie in the hot sun. All the time he could want, no rush, no fear of missing.

There is one point where the armour does not close over Hector. The tender diamond hollow between the clavicles is naked. Achilles fits his sword's tip here.

Slowly, evenly, the pressure mounting, he pushes.

Father

Only two of the three chariot horses are left. Pedasus has fallen, the outrigger who gallantly kept pace, and only the two immortals remain. This is the twelfth dawn broken by Achilles heaving them into harness. He doesn't even pause to pass a hand over their satin necks. Each dawn for the last eleven days he has hooked great Hector's body like a plough to the back of his chariot. He has threaded a strap through Hector's ankles, thonging them together like fish to be carried. Then he hooks this thong to his car and drags the body, nose bumping down, through the dust. He has done this each morning. Three times each morning they circle the stone barrow built for Patroclus. A modest barrow, built to tide Patroclus over till the not far time when he and Achilles will lie together again under something more fit.

Achilles has not slept since his oblivion on the beach after the funeral. Then he was out, face down in the sand by the raked-over ashes. Patroclus had let him rest. But not for long. For the last eleven days and nights Achilles' eyes have burned in their sockets so his men are afraid to look at them. But he doesn't see his men. He doesn't notice Briseis, more friendless than ever with Patroclus gone. She creeps around like an unowned kitten, fending for herself as best she can. He doesn't even see the barrow where Patroclus' ashes lie, though round and round and round he goes. He has eyes for one man only: that huge body, winched up by the heels each day at dawn, which will not rot, which will not stop being beautiful.

When he had finished killing Hector the Myrmidons had each had a go, killing him again and again. They took it in turns to shove in a spear. Some jabbed; others wiggled, getting the feel of the man, till Hector's body, stripped of the armour he had stolen from Patroclus, was ugly, squelching pulp. Now all those wounds are sealed. Achilles has never seen a body so perfect. It has only one mark: a stain like a kiss at Hector's throat.

On this twelfth morning he is making for Hector when Thetis appears. She interposes her immortal self between Hector and her son and Achilles, wanting to see round her, is forced to see her. She takes a hand in both her cool ones; holds his head and kisses his hammering brow.

‘Child,' she says, ‘this has to stop.'

At the same moment Iris goes to Priam. His eyes are raw with weeping; tears have washed stripes in the filth on his face. When Iris finds him he is moaning and rubbing dung from the stables into his hair – as if it were ointment.

The goddess touches his shoulder.

‘Priam, this cannot go on. Zeus has sent me to tell you you are to go to Achilles with gifts. He will give up Hector's body in return. Take your chariot, a waggon for a bier, and one driver. You won't need a guard.'

Hecuba thinks her husband has gone mad. The plan is certain death. The end of Troy – sure enough with Hector gone – a matter now of days.

‘If you're so sure Zeus is with you, ask him for a sign.'

Priam is sure. Outside with his waggon and Idaeus, his old herald, to drive it, he offers Zeus wine and prays to the thinker god to send his bird. They hear the heavy wings of Zeus' eagle and see the bird riding the air to the right. Falling under its huge shadow Hecuba's heart clears.

All day Achilles has sat with Hector, watching him, not taking his eyes off him for a second. He doesn't move; only a muscle in his cheek tightens from time to time.

Cassandra looks down through the dusk from the ramparts of Troy as the mule-drawn waggon sets off with the cart behind it. The great eagle stays close to the travellers, holding the waggon as tight in its gaze as a gull holds a boat soon to land its trawl.

Zeus sends Hermes to guide them in the form of a Myrmidon. It is a warm dusk and mist rises high from Scamander's banks. Priam and Idaeus have stopped to water the animals. When they see the Myrmidon shoulder through the mist towards them Priam's hand moves towards his sword.

‘The royal Priam. Away from Troy so late! Have you deserted her now you've lost Hector?'

Priam flinches. The god goes on:

‘You'll know me for one of Achilles' men. Don't be afraid. I have a father your age. But what are you doing here with this old man? Do you want to get killed?'

Priam is not afraid. When Hermes tells him that Hector's body is as firm and as beautiful as if gods had embalmed it – and this in spite of Achilles' daily ritual of insult – his heart soars. Hector's piety has not gone unnoticed. He rummages for a moment beneath the waggon's wicker cover and comes up with a heavy golden beaker.

Hermes refuses the gift, pretending to think it a bribe.

‘But I will guide you past the sentries and take you to the lord Achilles. These nights he never sleeps.'

Hermes puts the sentries to sleep. Idaeus' waggon with four mules drawing it, Priam's chariot with Hermes riding it, move as peacefully across the Achaean trench as two farm carts entering town on market day.

When they reach Achilles' compound, fenced-off with a high palisade, his ship moored nearby, Hermes reveals himself to Priam. Only a god – or Achilles – could, single-handed, slip back the bolt that fastens the fence.

*   *   * 

A
CHILLES SITS
motionless, a table of untasted food in front of him. Priam sinks before him and embraces his knees.

Imagine: the mighty Priam crouched before you like a child.

Gently Achilles removes his hands from the old man's clasp. For a moment it looks as if he will stroke the long white hair, it is so like the hair of his own father whom he has not seen these nine years since he set sail with Phoenix for Troy. Huge sobs break from Achilles as he thinks of Peleus, ageing at home in Phthia, uncomforted by his son. And Priam? He thinks of Hector – of what else has he thought these twelve days? – who was like no one else on earth and whom no one could match but this man.

The two men hold each other and weep: for those they have lost, for those who will lose them, for all the men gone down in the slow years of this wasteful war.