The Song of Achilles(63)
Our lines went quickly ragged as some outstripped others in their speed, glory-hungry, eager to be the first to kill a real Trojan. By halfway across the plain we were no longer in ranks, or even kingdoms. The Myrmidons had largely passed me, drifting in a cloud off to the left, and I mingled among Menelaus’ long-haired Spartans, all oiled and combed for battle.
I ran, armor banging. My breath came thickly, and the ground shook with the pounding of feet, a rumbling roar growing louder. The dust kicked up by the charge was almost blinding. I could not see Achilles. I could not see the man beside me. I could do nothing but grip my shield and run.
The front lines collided in an explosion of sound, a burst of spraying splinters and bronze and blood. A writhing mass of men and screams, sucking up rank after rank like Charybdis. I saw the mouths of men moving but could not hear them. There was only the crash of shields against shields, of bronze against shattering wood.
A Spartan beside me dropped suddenly, transfixed through the chest by a spear. My head jerked around, looking for the man who had thrown it, but saw nothing but a jumble of bodies. I knelt by the Spartan to close his eyes, to say a quick prayer, then almost vomited when I saw that he was still alive, wheezing at me in beseeching terror.
A crash next to me—I startled and saw Ajax using his giant shield like a club, smashing it into faces and bodies. In his wake, the wheels of a Trojan chariot creaked by, and a boy peered over the side, showing his teeth like a dog. Odysseus pounded past, running to capture its horses. The Spartan clutched at me, his blood pouring over my hands. The wound was too deep; there was nothing to be done. A dull relief when the light faded from his eyes at last. I closed them with gritty, trembling fingers.
I staggered dizzily to my feet; the plain seemed to slew and pound like surf before me. My eyes would not focus; there was too much movement, flashes of sun and armor and skin.
Achilles appeared from somewhere. He was blood-splattered and breathless, his face flushed, his spear smeared red up to the grip. He grinned at me, then turned and leapt into a clump of Trojans. The ground was strewn with bodies and bits of armor, with spear-shafts and chariot wheels, but he never stumbled, not once. He was the only thing on the battlefield that didn’t pitch feverishly, like the salt-slicked deck of a ship, until I was sick with it.
I did not kill anyone, or even attempt to. At the end of the morning, hours and hours of nauseating chaos, my eyes were sun blind, and my hand ached with gripping my spear—though I had used it more often to lean on than threaten. My helmet was a boulder crushing my ears slowly into my skull.
It felt like I had run for miles, though when I looked down I saw that my feet had beaten the same circle over and over again, flattening the same dry grass as if preparing a dancing field. Constant terror had siphoned and drained me, even though somehow I always seemed to be in a lull, a strange pocket of emptiness into which no men came, and I was never threatened.
It was a measure of my dullness, my dizziness, that it took me until midafternoon to see that this was Achilles’ doing. His gaze was on me always, preternaturally sensing the moment when a soldier’s eyes widened at the easy target I presented. Before the man drew another breath, he would cut him down.
He was a marvel, shaft after shaft flying from him, spears that he wrenched easily from broken bodies on the ground to toss at new targets. Again and again I saw his wrist twist, exposing its pale underside, those flute-like bones thrusting elegantly forward. My spear sagged forgotten to the ground as I watched. I could not even see the ugliness of the deaths anymore, the brains, the shattered bones that later I would wash from my skin and hair. All I saw was his beauty, his singing limbs, the quick flickering of his feet.
DUSK CAME AT LAST and released us, limping and exhausted, back to our tents, dragging the wounded and dead. A good day, our kings said, clapping each other on the back. An auspicious beginning. Tomorrow we will do it again.
We did it again, and again. A day of fighting became a week, then a month. Then two.
It was a strange war. No territory was gained, no prisoners were taken. It was for honor only, man against man. With time, a mutual rhythm emerged: we fought a civilized seven days out of ten, with time off for festivals and funerals. No raids, no surprise attacks. The leaders, once buoyant with hopes of swift victory, grew resigned to a lengthy engagement. The armies were remarkably well matched, could tussle on the field day after day with no side discernibly stronger. This was due in part to the soldiers who poured in from all over Anatolia to help the Trojans and make their names. Our people were not the only ones greedy for glory.
Achilles flourished. He went to battle giddily, grinning as he fought. It was not the killing that pleased him—he learned quickly that no single man was a match for him. Nor any two men, nor three. He took no joy in such easy butchery, and less than half as many fell to him as might have. What he lived for were the charges, a cohort of men thundering towards him. There, amidst twenty stabbing swords he could finally, truly fight. He gloried in his own strength, like a racehorse too long penned, allowed at last to run. With a fevered impossible grace he fought off ten, fifteen, twenty-five men. This, at last, is what I can really do.
I did not have to go with him as often as I had feared. The longer the war dragged on, the less it seemed important to roust every Greek from his tent. I was not a prince, with honor at stake. I was not a soldier, bound to obedience, or a hero whose skill would be missed. I was an exile, a man with no status or rank. If Achilles saw fit to leave me behind, that was his business alone.