As he spoke, Sarpedon stepped back down so that only the upper half of his body remained visible behind the stone parapet. A moment of quiet followed in which the ranks of Argives, Ithacans and Myrmidons shifted restlessly, while some of the Locrians fitted arrows and half drew their bowstrings in readiness. Then a slow, mocking laugh broke the silence. Eperitus looked around to see who among the Greeks could draw amusement from the shock of Sarpedon’s presence, and saw Achilles leaning on his shield and chuckling as he looked up at the Lycian king.
‘Sarpedon, you old fool,’ he called, shaking his head and smiling. ‘Do you really think we Greeks are going to return to our homes before Troy has fallen? And do you think that by standing on the crumbling walls of this old dung heap you’re going to stop me from knocking its worm-eaten gates off their hinges and killing every living thing that opposes me? Then let me make you an offer: any Lycian inside the walls of Lyrnessus, including yourself, who wants to return to his home now can do so, taking his armaments, his honour and his life with him. All I ask is your word that none will ever come back to the aid of Troy. But any who choose to remain will be slaughtered, without mercy, and his body left as carrion for the birds. Achilles, chief of the Myrmidons, has spoken.’
There was a roar of approval from the Greek ranks, but Sarpedon raised his hand again and they fell silent.
‘I am familiar with your reputation, Prince Achilles – as a butcher who knows no restraint, a murdering dog whose excesses are shameful even to the Greeks. You strut around the battlefield as if Hades himself cannot claim you, yet all the time the shadow of death is at your heels. Do you think we haven’t heard of your own mother’s prophecy, that you’ll die here in Ilium? Perhaps today your fate will catch up with you.’
Without warning, a spear flew towards the battlements and split the air where, a heartbeat before, Sarpedon’s head had been. Slowly, the Lycian’s shocked face rose back above the parapet to see Patroclus standing in front of Achilles, his arrogant features twisted with fury.
‘Your own fate will strike you down long before a drop of Achilles’s blood touches Trojan soil,’ he shouted. ‘If you ever see your homeland again, Sarpedon, it’ll be as a corpse, to be wept over by your wife as she curses the gods for their cruelty.’
Achilles placed a calming hand on Patroclus’s shoulder and pulled him back. Stepping forward, he raised his spear above his head then thrust the point towards the walls. Simultaneously, the lines of Greek warriors lifted their shields before them and began to move, closing ranks as they marched up the slope once more. At their head, the assault parties took up their ladders and resumed their advance, while to the rear the Locrians pulled back their bowstrings to their cheeks and waited for the enemy to show themselves.
They did not have to wait long. Sarpedon raised his hand again, but this time it was not to parley. A moment later the city’s defences were crowded with armed men – not the weak and badly outnumbered militia the Greeks had originally expected, but a force many hundreds strong, their spearheads blazing like points of fire all along the battlements.
As the Greeks stared up in awe at the defenders, Sarpedon’s hand fell. An instant later the air above the city walls was filled with a dark, hissing cloud of arrows that arced high above the heads of the assault parties to fall into the massed ranks of the main army behind. Thousands of men who had lowered their guard at the appearance of Sarpedon were suddenly scrambling to raise their shields above their heads again. Many did not succeed.
Odysseus nodded at Eperitus, who turned sharply to the crouching ranks behind him and barked out the order to advance at the double. More arrows dropped among them and more men fell, but the lull was over and their blood was up, so they came on with a grim determination that showed in every sweat- and dust-caked face. Eperitus felt a touch of pride at the sight of them, but his stern grimace did not falter as he turned and broke into an awkward run.
Odysseus was beside him, with his oval shield raised above his head and his spears clutched in his right hand. The two men had been in more fights together than either could remember and they drew confidence from each other’s presence as they ran into battle together, sweating in their armour while dozens of black-shafted arrows fell all around them.
At the top of the slope, the first assault parties had reached the ditch and were raising their ladders against the walls. A deadly rain of spears and rocks were cast down on their heads, felling many as they struggled to plant the feet of the ladders in the base of the ditch. Then, as the first ladders hit the wall, they realized something was horribly wrong.
‘They’ve deepened the ditch,’ Eperitus exclaimed, raising his voice above the whistle of arrows and the shouts and cries of men. ‘The ladders aren’t long enough to reach the tops of the walls.’
Odysseus stared at the tell-tale layer of fresh earth that crowned the top of the slope and watched in dismay as the men of the assault parties poured into the ditch, where only their heads remained visible. He and Diomedes had scouted the walls a few nights before, when the trench that circled the city was silted up by mud brought in by the winter rains. They had built the ladders accordingly, but the defenders had since re-dug the ditch and now the tops of the ladders were falling a spear’s length short of the parapet.
‘Damn it,’ he cursed, suddenly quickening his pace. ‘But by all the gods we’re not turning back now. We’ll take those bloody walls even if we have to climb them on the bodies of our own dead!’
Eperitus followed in the king’s wake, staring ahead at the rapidly approaching fortifications. At every point, desperate men were trying to reach the battlements with their outstretched arms, where the defenders speared them with ease or cut off their hands as they seized the parapets. Only one ladder reached the top of the wall, the foot of which was supported firmly in Polites’s lap to give it the extra height. Men scrambled on to his back and sprang up the thick wooden rungs, but were easily cut down as they reached the mass of defenders at the top. Antiphus had abandoned his own ladder and was crouching behind the cover of another man’s shield, shooting enemy after enemy from the walls.
‘It’s suicide!’ Eperitus protested, seizing Odysseus by his cloak and trying to stop him. ‘We need to fall back. We can attack again tomorrow, after we’ve made the ladders longer.’
‘Fall back yourself,’ Odysseus grunted, pushing Eperitus’s hand away. There was a fierce anger in his eyes, which Eperitus had become more familiar with as the years of the siege had dragged on. ‘I’m sick of the Trojans frustrating every attack we make. If we’re going to return to Ithaca, then we have to keep fighting until every last one of them is dead.’
‘Then join Achilles at the gates, where at least we have a chance of breaking into the city. It’s madness to attack walls we can’t even reach!’
‘To Hades with Achilles!’ Odysseus cursed. ‘And to Hades with you, too, if you won’t come.’
Scowling, he turned and ran the last stretch of the slope, where, with his shield held over his head against the rain of rocks and spears, he dropped down into the ditch beside Polites. A moment later his helmeted head was lost from sight as the ranks of the Ithacan army rushed past the lone figure of their captain, sweeping round him in their eagerness to reach the walls. As the final rank ran by, a sneering voice called out: ‘Lost your nerve, Eperitus?’