Chapter 193: The Last Night

Night fell. The walls glowed with fire.

The fire of preparation. Cauldrons of oil sat on braziers every fifty paces along the northern parapet, the liquid shimmering with heat. Men stirred them with iron rods, keeping the temperature steady. Too cool and it would not stick to armour. Too hot and it would ignite before it reached the ground.

Below the wall, logs lay in rows on the northern slope. Heavy timber, stripped of branches, lashed in bundles of three. Ropes held them against iron stakes driven into the rock. Cut the ropes, and the logs would roll down the slope and into whatever formation of men was climbing toward the wall.

Archers stood behind the defenders, elevated on wooden platforms Daidalos had built two weeks ago. They could shoot over the heads of the front line, into the men on ladders, before they reached the top.

The kill zones were marked. Twelve men. Twenty paces apart. Three paces back from the parapet. The gap between them was the trap.

Everything was ready. What remained was the thing that could not be prepared for. The moment when the planning stopped and the dying began.

Lysander walked the wall.

He did it every hour. A circuit of the northern and eastern sections, checking positions, checking faces. He looked at each man and measured what he saw.

Some were steady. Veterans of the black ship raids. Men who had fought before and knew what fighting meant. They stood at their positions with their spears ready and their shields close.

Some were not steady. The settlement volunteers. Fishermen and farmers who had trained for months but had never killed a man. They held their spears too tightly. Their eyes moved too much. Their breathing was too fast, too shallow.

Lysander stopped at one position. A young man, perhaps nineteen, a fisherman from Maea’s community, holding a spear like he was afraid it would bite him.

"What is your name," Lysander said.

"Philon, lord."

"Where did you train."

"The harbour yard. With Miros."

"Miros is not here. I am the floating role tonight. If your section is pressed, I will come. Hold your position. Do not turn. Do not run. The man beside you is your wall. You are his."

Philon nodded. His grip on the spear did not loosen.

"Your hands are too tight," Lysander said. "Loosen them. The spear moves from the wrist, not the fingers. If your hands are rigid, the thrust is rigid. A rigid thrust is slow."

Philon loosened his grip. Slightly.

"Better," Lysander said. He moved on.

He reached the eastern section and found Paris.

Paris was sitting on the parapet, his legs dangling over the inner side, his bow across his lap. He was looking at the city below, not the sea. The lower town, the harbour, the streets he had walked through as a prince and a fool and a man who had tried to do something useful.

Antenor was beside him, asleep against the parapet wall, his bow across his knees. The old hunter slept when he could. A rested archer was a living archer.

"You should sleep," Lysander said.

"I cannot."

"Try."

"I said I cannot." Paris looked at him. "How do you do it. Walk the wall. Talk to men. Check positions. How do you do it as if it is just another night."

"Because it is. The planning is done. The wall is built. The men are trained. The oil is hot. The logs are tied. There is nothing left to do except wait, and waiting cannot be improved by worrying about it."

Paris was quiet.

"I am not like you," he said. "I cannot turn it off."

"You do not need to turn it off. You need to point it. Tomorrow, when the ships enter the strait, the fear will become focus. The bow will take it. The arrow will take it. You will not have time to be afraid because you will be too busy shooting."

"And if I miss."

"Then you shoot again. Until you hit or you die. Those are the only two outcomes on a wall."

Paris looked at the harbour below. The fire ships were anchored in the eastern bay. Three of them, their decks loaded with clay jars of the sulfur compound, their crews sleeping beside their weapons. Tomorrow they would row into the strait and set themselves on fire and row into the enemy fleet.

"Those men," Paris said. "The fire ship crews. They will die."

"Some of them. Maybe all of them."

"And we just accept that."

"They volunteered. Every one of them. We did not send them. They went."

Paris was quiet for a long moment.

"Hector told me once that fear tells you what you are protecting," Paris said. "I am protecting Helen. And the children in the schools. And the boy who taught me the word for return."

"Then you know why you are here."

"I know why. I do not know if I am enough."

"You are enough. The bow is enough. Two hundred paces is enough."

Paris nodded. He picked up his bow and held it the way a man holds the thing he trusts most. His hands were steady. That was enough for now.

Lysander continued his circuit.

Priam asked to see the fleet.

Hecuba tried to stop him. "You cannot stand. You cannot walk."

"Then carry me."

Hector arrived with four guards. They carried the king on a litter up the stairway to the highest tower above the northern gate. The view stretched from the mountains to the sea.

Priam lay on the litter and looked north.

A thousand ships anchored in the bay. Black hulls against the water, bare masts, fires burning on the shore. The Greek camp was visible. Tents, cookfires, the movement of men.

Priam was quiet for a long time.

"I have seen fleets before," he said. "Egyptian. Hittite. Phoenician. None like this."

He turned his head and looked at Hector. His son stood beside the litter, armoured, armed, his face set in the expression of a man who had been carrying a city on his shoulders and was now being asked to carry a crown as well.

"You are the king now," Priam said.

Hector looked at him.

"I have not died yet," Priam said. "But I cannot lead. I cannot fight. I cannot stand on the wall. You have been leading for months. Now lead as king, not as prince."

"Father—"

"Say it. So I can hear it. So the men around me can hear it."

Hector was quiet. The guards stood still. The wind moved across the tower.

"I am the king," Hector said.

Priam closed his eyes. His hand found Hector’s arm and held it.

"Good," he said. "Now defend my city."

His hand fell. He opened his eyes and looked at the fleet one more time.

"Take me back to my chamber," he said. "I want to die in my own bed."

They carried him down.

In the Greek camp, Odysseus and Diomedes stood on the beach and studied the walls.

They had been studying them for hours. Since the fleet anchored, since the first lookouts reported the layout, since the reality of what they were facing became visible in stone and bronze and the glint of spears on a parapet.

"The northern wall is the target," Diomedes said. "Flat ground. Easy approach. No natural obstacles between the beach and the wall."

"Except the logs on the slope," Odysseus said.

"What logs."

Odysseus pointed. Along the northern slope, just below the wall, rows of timber were visible in the failing light. Lashed together. Held in place by ropes.

"Rolling logs," Odysseus said. "They cut the ropes, the logs roll down the slope into the formation. Breaks the line. Kills the men in front. Slows the climb."

Diomedes frowned. "I have not seen that before."

"Neither have I. It is not in any siege manual I have read. It is something Lysander built."

"You sound like you respect him."

"I do. Respect does not mean I will not kill him."

They studied the wall in silence. The parapet was lined with men. Too many to count, too many to assess individually. But the pattern was visible. Spaced positions. Gaps between them. Archers behind the line.

"The gaps," Diomedes said. "There are spaces between the defenders. Look. Twenty paces apart. That is too wide for a continuous line."

"I see it. Either they do not have enough men, or the gaps are intentional."

"Intentional gaps in a defensive line? That is suicide."

"Or it is a trap. We will find out tomorrow."

Diomedes looked at the strait. The water was calm, the passage narrow. The fleet would have to enter in columns. Twenty ships abreast at most. The first ships would be the most vulnerable.

"The net," Odysseus said. "If the net is still there, the first ships will be caught. The fire ships will close in. We lose the vanguard before we land."

"The divers cut it last night."

"Did they. Agamemnon says they did. I would like to confirm that before I sail my twelve ships into a strait that might still be blocked."

Diomedes looked at him. "You do not trust Agamemnon’s intelligence."

"I trust it when it is verified. The spy has been reliable so far. But reliable intelligence is not certain intelligence. One mistake. One piece of false information. One trap disguised as a weakness. And a thousand ships sail into a killing ground."

Diomedes was quiet. He looked at the walls again.

"The wall between the third and fifth towers," he said. "The stone is darker there. Newer. It has been reinforced."

Odysseus looked. Diomedes was right. The section between the third and fifth towers was a slightly different colour. Newer stone, fitted more recently, the mortar still pale.

"That is where they expect us to hit," Diomedes said. "They reinforced it because they know it is the weakest approach."

"Or they reinforced it to make us think it is the weakest approach, so we commit our force there, and the real weakness is elsewhere."

"You are a paranoid man, Odysseus."

"I am a living man, Diomedes. The two are related."

They stood on the beach as the sun set behind the walls of Troy. The sky turned red. The sea turned dark. The fleet rocked at anchor. The camp fires burned.

Tomorrow, they would sail into the strait. Tomorrow, they would find out whether the net was cut and the gaps were traps and the walls were as strong as they looked.

Tonight, two kings stood on a beach and studied the thing they had come to break and did not speak because there was nothing left to say.

Achilles was alone.

He sat on the beach, far from the camp, far from the fleet, far from the kings and their councils and their plans. His spear lay beside him in the sand. His armour was off. The golden chestplate, the greaves, the shield. He wore only a tunic and the cold.

He was sharpening a spearhead. Not his spear. His spear did not need sharpening. He was sharpening a spare. The motion was automatic. Stone on bronze. Stone on bronze.

Patroclus found him there.

"You should eat," Patroclus said.

"I am not hungry."

"You have not eaten since morning."

"I am not hungry."

Patroclus sat beside him. He did not argue. He had learned years ago that Achilles did not respond to arguments. He responded to silence. So Patroclus sat in silence and watched the spearhead catch the last light.

"The walls are high," Patroclus said.

"I do not care about the walls."

"Hector is behind them."

Achilles stopped sharpening. He held the spearhead up. The edge was clean. He tested it with his thumb. A thin line of blood appeared. He wiped it away.

"Tomorrow they enter the strait," Achilles said. "Ships. Fire. Arrows. Men drowning. Men burning. I do not care about any of it."

"What do you care about."

"The moment he comes out. The moment he stands on the plain and I stand on the plain and there is nothing between us. That moment. I have been waiting for that moment since I first heard his name."

Patroclus looked at his cousin. In the firelight, Achilles’s face was golden. Beautiful and empty. The face of a statue that had been carved for a temple and then left in the dark because the priests were afraid of it.

"What if he does not come out," Patroclus said.

"He will. He is a man who defends his city. He will come out because that is what men who defend cities do. They stand in front of them. They fight. They die."

"And if he wins."

Achilles looked at him. His eyes were pale. Empty. The eyes of a man who had never considered the possibility of losing because the possibility did not exist in the world he lived in.

"He will not win," Achilles said.

He picked up his spear and stood. He walked toward the water and looked at the dark sea.

Tomorrow, the fleet would sail. Tomorrow, the strait would be entered. Tomorrow, men would burn and drown and die on walls and on beaches.

Achilles did not care about tomorrow. He cared about the day after. And the day after that. And the moment, whenever it came, when Hector of Troy stood on the plain with a spear in his hand and Achilles of Phthia stood facing him with nothing between them but air and the sound of their breathing.

He would wait. He had always been good at waiting. The killing was fast. The waiting was the part that took time.

He turned and walked back to his tent. Patroclus followed.

Behind them, the sea was dark. The fleet was dark. The camp was dark.

And across the water, the walls of Troy were lit with fire. A city that did not sleep, preparing for the morning that would bring a thousand ships into its strait and fifty thousand men onto its shores.

The last night of peace was ending.

Dawn would bring the war.