Paris—whom I dismissed as a fop in my description of his meeting with Hector only the day before and then proceeded to cuckold—rides near Hector and also comes on like some demon-possessed killing machine. Paris’s killing expertise is archery, and on this day his long arrows never seem to miss. Achaeans and Argives drop with Paris’s long-shaft arrows in their throats, hearts, genitals, and eyes. Every shot is a hit.
Hector slashes his way through every pocket of Greek resistance, hacking necks like daisy stems, offering no quarter and hearing no pleas for mercy in the deafness of his killing frenzy. When Achaeans manage to rally against the Trojan onslaught in a brave clump of resistance here or there, a bolt of blue energy from the roiling clouds explodes among them like a cosmic grenade and the thunder that follows mixes with the cries of dying men.
Ideomeneus and the great king Agamemnon cut and run. Then Big and Little Ajax, campaigners of a thousand battles, lose heart and flee the field. Odysseus, the “long-enduring,” can’t endure this slaughter and decides that the greater part of valor must reside in the safety of his ships back on the beach. He runs damned fast for a short-legged man. The only man who doesn’t turn and flee is old Nestor, and that’s only because Helen’s husband has put an arrow through the skull of Nestor’s lead horse, tangling the other steeds in their panic. Nestor cuts the traces clear with his sword, obviously with every intent of vacating the battlefield as fast as he can, but Hector’s chariot surges forward, the men around Nestor fall dead with Paris’s arrows protruding from their chests and necks, and the horses flee even faster than the departed Greek heroes, leaving old Nestor standing in his horseless chariot with Hector fast approaching.
When Odysseus sprints by, not even giving the old man a glance, Nestor cries, “Where are you going in such a hurry, son of Laertes, O cool tactician . . .” but his sarcasm is wasted. Odysseus disappears in the dust cloud of panicked retreat without slowing for his old friend.
Diomedes, always more afraid of being called a coward than he is of pain or death, drives his chariot back into the fray, obviously intent on rescuing Nestor and driving back Hector. He swoops Nestor up like a wrinkled bag of laundry and the old charioteer seizes the reins in both hands, driving Diomedes’ chariot not away from the charging Hector, but toward him. Diomedes gets close enough to cast his spear at Hector, but the heavy shaft kills Hector’s driver, Eniopeus, son of Thebaeus, and for a moment, as the driver’s corpse flies backward into the surprised foot soldiers and Hector’s horses rear out of control, everything changes.
I’ve read that there is a moment like this in many battles, where everything hangs in the balance. As Hector fights to regain control of his horses and the Trojans with him pause in confusion, the Greeks see a possible reversal of fortune and rush into the gap, loping after old Nestor and Diomedes. For an instant the Achaeans have the initiative again, shouting their defiance and hacking down the men leading the Trojan assault.
Then Zeus intervenes again. Thunder booms. Lightning splits the earth and horses disappear in a flash of light and the stink of sulfur and burning hooves. Achaean chariots near Diomedes and Nestor explode in a tumble of horseflesh and flying bodies. Bronze melts and leather shields burst into flame. It’s obvious even to the thick-skulled Diomedes that Zeus is not pleased with him this day.
Nestor tries to drag the rearing horses around but they have the metaphorical bit in their very real mouths and can’t be managed. Their chariot—all alone now since the other Achaeans have turned tail and fled—bounces toward ten thousand angry Trojans.
“Quick, Diomedes, grab the reins and help me swing these stallions around!” cries Nestor. “To fight more today is to die today!”
Diomedes grabs the reins from the old man but does not turn the chariot. “Old Soldier, if I run today, Hector will brag to his troops—‘Diomedes ran for his ships, and I drove him back!’ “
Nestor grabs Diomedes by his muscled throat. “What are you, six years old? Turn the fucking chariot, you asshole, or Hector will be wearing both our guts for garters before it’s teatime in Troy!”
Or some words to that effect. I am a hundred yards across the battlefield when this occurs, and the shotgun mike on my baton might not be working correctly. Also, since I am morphed into the shape of a Trojan foot soldier, I’m running with the rest, watching all this over my shoulder as Paris’s arrows fall around us and among us.
Diomedes wrestles with his dilemma for two or three seconds and then wrestles the horses instead, turning their heads, driving the chariot back toward the black ships and safety.
“Hah!” screams Hector over the din. He has a new driver—Archeptolemus, Iphitus’ handsome son—and is coming on again with the renewed vigor of a man truly enjoying his work. “Hah! Diomedes—made you run! You coward! You girly girl! You glittering little puppet! You quavering sparrowfart!”
Diomedes turns again in the chariot, glowering with fury and embarrassment, but Nestor has the reins now and the horses themselves have figured out which way safety lies. The chariot rolls over boulders, ruts, and fleeing Greek foot soldiers in the horses’ wild gallop toward the beach and safety, and the only way Diomedes can fight Hector now is by leaping off the chariot and fighting the thousands of Trojans on foot. He chooses not to do this.
“If you want to change our fates, you must find the fulcrum,” Helen had said that morning.
She’d asked me then about my knowledge of the Iliad—although she thought of it as my oracle-sense of the future—and pressed me to find the fulcrum of events, the single point in the ten-year war on which everything pivoted. Fate’s hinge, as it were.
I’d hemmed and hawed that morning, distracting her and myself with a final bout of lovemaking, but I’d thought about that question in the crazy hours since.
If you want to change our fates, you must find the fulcrum.
I’d bet my tenure as a Homerian scholar that the fulcrum of this particular tragic tale was fast approaching—the embassy to Achilles.
So far, events continue—more or less—to follow the poem, even with Aphrodite and Ares sidelined by wounds. Zeus has laid down the law and intervened on the side of the Trojans. I have no intention of QTing back to Olympos unless I have to, but I can guess that Homer’s narrative is being played out there as well—Queen Hera fretting that her Argives are getting pummeled and trying to persuade Poseidon to intervene on their behalf, but the “god who rocks the earth” being shocked by the suggestion—he has no desire to battle Zeus. Then, when the Greeks are really routed later today, Athena will strip naked, then dress in her best battle armor and glistening breastplate—well, I confess that it might be worth QTing to Olympos for that—but is stopped cold by Zeus’s messenger, Iris. Zeus’s message will be succinct—
“If you and Hera come to oppose me by clash of arms, my gray-eyed girl, I’ll maim your racers from beneath their yokes, hurl both you goddesses down from your chariot, smash your car, and rend both of you so terribly with my lightning bolts that you’ll be in the healing vats ten slow wheeling years before the green worms can stitch you together again.”
Athena will stay on Olympos. The Greeks, after a few hours of successful counterattack, will suffer heavier losses and fall back behind their own fortifications—a trench dug ten years ago shortly after landing, a thousand sharpened stakes, all the defenses recently deepened and built back up at Agamemnon’s order—but even behind their own wall, the panicked Achaeans will lose hope and vote to sail for home.
Agamemnon will try to rally them by throwing a great feast for his commanders—even as Hector and his thousands organize for the final charge that they know will end in the burning of the Achaeans’ black ships and the settling of this war for once and all—and at the Greek king’s feast, Nestor will argue that their only hope lies in Agamemnon making up with Achilles.