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He has come to a clearing in the battle. It happens sometimes. The living are all around him, but the dead are nearer. To his left, the body of a Trojan he has killed. Far up ahead he can see the walls of Troy. He heads forwards.
A Trojan stumbles towards him. He sees Patroclus and crouches, holding up his shield too far from his body. The man is no one, it's plain -- just some skinny farmer's son rounded up by Priam to pad out his army. No one whose name it would be worth something to know. He doesn't even have a helmet, or perhaps he's lost it. He holds his sword ready. He's not a coward, at least.
Patroclus steps towards him and the man's sword clangs against Patroclus' shield; as it does, Patroclus pushes back against him, and, unbalanced, the man stutters backwards and falls to the ground. Patroclus takes his own sword and deals the death blow between the man's ribs. He kicks the body over, and with his foot, he presses the man's face down into the ground, eyes, nose and gaping mouth against the soil. He couldn't bear the corpse staring up at the sky.
The hot sun beats down on the plain. Its light catches on someone's helmet, someone's shield. Is Apollo watching from above or from the walls of Troy, or is he down in the fray? Or is he distracted, feasting with Ethiopians, careless, for the day, of what happens here?
Patroclus steps forwards again, past more corpses, back into the fight.
-
At nightfall there is talk amongst the leaders of the Achaians. Agamemnon speaks as if the war will soon end. He has stripped off his armour and has a great purple cloak wrapped about him. They have a fire going whose flames waver in the damp wind that blows inland from the sea.
Agamemnon says, "Priam's treasure must run out." Though when they set out from their homelands, many dreamed that it might be. "It's been nine years or more since we came here, but if we were only fighting Trojans, we would outnumber them ten to one -- we could have taken the city in the first month. They have an army because they can pay for it. Their mercenaries will desert them as soon as the money is gone."
His fellow leaders shift about. Menelaus and a few others nod to show a kind of support; others shake their heads. Many appear to have let their attention drift elsewhere.
Ajax says, "We've all thought that sometimes." Large, built like a wrestler, with dark hair and thick, dark brows. If you struck him with your sword, you imagine it would shatter and you would be left holding the empty hilt, a dead stump, though Ajax' skin is as scarred as anyone's here. His voice has a scrape in it, as if something jagged is permanently caught in his throat. "In the fifth year, I thought, surely the Trojan gold won't last another summer. Now I think, perhaps it will last another nine."
"No," says Agamemnon. "This year, it will run out. I've heard the prisoners talking, and Calchas stands by his prophecy: the war's end is due this year."
There are a thousand prophecies about this war. Patroclus heard the first the same day he heard that Helen was taken.
Ajax says, "Do you think all the Trojan allies are fighting for the sake of their pay? On this side, we get no wages and many of us swore no oath to protect the marriage of Helen."
"The Trojans do not have such loyal friends."
Odysseus intervenes. He is standing further from the fire -- Patroclus was not even aware that he was here, and not at his tent -- and the rest turn towards him.
"The Trojan money will run out, if the gods are willing, and not all their allies will remain for friendship or love of the fight. But what will men say of us -- what will the songs say, if we can only defeat an exhausted, impoverished city?"
Another voice, from near Patroclus: "Odysseus is anxious for his spoils." Stupidly, Patroclus thinks for a moment he hears Achilles. In fact, it is Antilochus, the son of Nestor.
Odysseus brushes the comment aside. "Every man, woman and child in all Achaia has heard of of the famous wealth of Troy. If we can't bring some of it home, who will even believe that we won?"
More shifting. More nodding and shaking heads.
Out away from the beach and away from Troy, off towards the west, Achilles' tomb stands in misshapen silhouette, still in progress. It's the latest task they've set their Trojan prisoners. Before that, it was improvements to Agamemnon's camp; before that, another tomb. There's a whole collection of them, a little cluster of oddly regular shapes, some larger, some smaller; a foreign colony of the Achaian dead.
It used to be that you'd send a man's body home for the last rites, if he died abroad, but here and now, that's not so easy. They can't spare anyone to sail homewards, and besides, the corpse would rot on the way. Not the best gift for the womenfolk: a hunk of foul and stinking flesh, half eaten by maggots, for them to clutch as they sing their laments. Better to do it here. When they leave -- if they ever leave -- perhaps they'll dig up the soil where they buried the ashes, and bring home shovelfuls of earth in their hulls, in place of the spent Trojan gold.
Nestor, old and close to the fire, clear-spoken and well-respected, says, "In fact, we ourselves are short of supplies."
-----
If, out in the wilds -- with no other company but the sounds of the beasts, and no warmth but a struggling fire -- if a man still partly a boy reaches for his companion in the night, that is one thing. But if, on their reunion some years later, that same man, in the house of his father, follows his childhood friend to his bed, that is something different altogether.
Achilles is perhaps twenty, perhaps twenty one. He has been chasing rumours of monstrous beasts -- five-headed dragons, fire-breathing eagles, snakes with the girth of three old oaks and the length, if you could measure them, more than the height of Olympus. There are none. Hercules, the great wanderer, strongest of all strongest men, saw to most of these creatures a generation ago. And the rest were picked off by Jason or by Theseus, or slunk away, perhaps, down to some place beyond Tartarus, where the daylight never reaches -- somewhere more fitted to their nature than the newly civilised Earth. Their killers have taken their glory. Achilles must find some other way to earn his.
Patroclus has been at war. Something brief, between Athens and Thebes.
The singer in Peleus' hall is singing the battle of Zeus and Typhoeus. Peleus has put on a feast for his son's return, but Achilles is barely eating. He looks as if he would like to dig Typhoeus out from under his mountain, to slay him in battle or die in the attempt. He would die, Patroclus thinks -- Typhoeus, son of Gaia, would flatten even Achilles -- and it would, after all, be impossible. But Patroclus too is hungry for something better than he has got from life so far. His father accompanied Jason on the Argo. His father, who sits talking with Peleus, old heroes, their reputations achieved. Their lives are already celebrated in song. If Patroclus died today, what would there be to sing of?
He and Achilles do not speak to one another much in the hall, but when Patroclus leaves, Achilles rises and follows him, away to that part of the house where Patroclus, the exile, sleeps. Achilles takes hold of him with restless energy. He rips his own clothes. He looks the same as ever, or almost the same -- it might be that he's a little more filled out. But still lean. Achilles has always had that lean, taut strength -- a fast runner, a man who could race down a lion or a stag and kill it with a few swift motions of his hands.
And he is still beautiful, of course.
But Patroclus still wonders, is this what I want? until, another touch and he is back in the past, back in the wilds with nothing to think about beyond bare survival and Achilles, Achilles, Achilles.
-----
They make arrangements for one third of the force to take half the ships and sail down the coast, to find a city they have not yet managed to raid. Or perhaps one form the early years that has since recovered.
Agamemnon, Menelaus and Odysseus will all go with the ships. They stride about with new vigour, directing men and consulting the omens, drawing maps with sticks in the sand and jabbing their fingers, here is where we stole fifty head of cattle in our first year; here we found plentiful gold; here there was little to steal, but the women were very lovely. Agamemnon smiles as he takes the direction of the wind. He is eager for the fight, for swift conquest, a battle with a beginning and an end.
Ajax remains to lead the defence of the diminished Achaian camp. Patroclus too remains. He watches the ships sail out, and imagines the Trojans watching from their high city walls: how it must feel to think, perhaps this time the whole fleet will depart. Perhaps we have worn them down. And even when they see that this is not the case, they will know that still, here is an opportunity to clear their enemies from their land. They will ready themselves. They too will find new energy, direct their troops and consult with seers -- when will be the best time to attack? Perhaps a man catches a whiff of smoke and sees in his mind all the dark Achaian ships sitting high upon the beach, in flames. Agamemnon, king among kings, would return to desolation.
Ajax stands resolute, with Hector's sword in his hand -- the relic of another age. Men once said that the Trojan army would collapse without its leader, the best of Priam's sons. Achilles said, there would be a man worth killing. And he did, in the end.
They wait, and the sun rises higher in the sky. The sand gets hot underfoot. It is after noon when the attack finally comes.
By sunset, there are many dead. There is a darker shadow up the side of one of the ships, and a salt-smoke smell. In the first hours of fighting, the Trojans drove the Achaians back and kindled a fire -- expecting disaster, Patroclus watched the flames flicker and swell, and then die. The gods do not want this war to end. The Achaians were reinvigorated; they pushed the Trojans back. Ajax has killed a son of Priam, Kebriones. The Trojans have withdrawn.
The next day, the Trojans press the Achaians close to their ships; the next day the same. The Achaian line holds, exhausted, tenuously.
The next day, Agamemnon and the rest of the fleet return.
-
Sometimes, you can meet a god in the field of battle. Patroclus once felt something like shards of ice piercing into his veins as Artemis slaughtered her way through the Myrmidons, the men from Achilles' homeland, in the fifth year of the war. She knocked him down and left him with a deep wound that started in his side, crossed his belly and ended at his chest. The scar is thick as a woman's finger. He never felt the touch of her blade.
Achilles died at the hands of Apollo, who shot him down from the Trojan battlements. Half the Achaians swear they saw the tall, shining figure of the god, his golden bow raised, and Patroclus saw the arrow that had passed through bone as easily as a knife through soft cheese, and stuck fast, an equal length showing on either side. No sword could cut the shaft, and not even Ajax could move it. Someone spoke of cutting into the body. In the end, both corpse and arrow burnt together on the pyre. A death worthy of a great warrior, Odysseus said -- no man could kill Achilles. And Patroclus always knew, Achilles did not want to live to old age.
Sometimes the gods join the fight. But most of the time, on the Trojan plain, you meet with mortal men; mostly men like yourself, but weaker. Now, their bodies are all about. As Agamemnon's stolen sheep are led ashore, the Achaians who remained pile up the corpses. They are, it is thought, mostly their own. The Trojans have already searched for their people. This evening, there will be twin pyres in the city and on the shore.
-----
Achilles had a girl from Mysia who used to scream.
He gets her in the third year of the war. He kills her parents, or someone does -- the man tries to defend his household; the woman, who knows? -- and the girl is found weeping, on her knees, rubbing the earth into her face. She is brought back with the rest of the spoils, and she falls to Achilles' lot. She is docile at first -- she seems quiet and well-behaved -- but in the night, first she shouts and calls on the gods, her father, her mother and the long dead heroes of her city; and then, after a while she is only screaming and screaming, the sound so harsh you think her throat must be scraped raw and bleeding. She doesn't stop until someone strikes her hard enough that she falls unconscious -- perhaps then she gets a kind of sleep. From then on, it is the same every night, until finally they send her up to Troy, to the city, to see what she can find for herself there, and to leave them to sleep in peace.
It is Patroclus who sees her off. She is weeping, and begs now to be allowed to stay. The city walls and their battlements terrify her. Mysia was not fortified in this way. She has only seen the Trojans from what she has glimpsed of the war, in her days at the camp -- to her, they are an armoured horde, and she thinks she will be killed at the gates, or become the captive of men yet worse than the Achaians. Patroclus tells her, with some truth, that she risks death if she stays. He draws his sword. She flees.
Afterwards, he finds Achilles on the beach with his lyre, plucking tunelessly, plung plong plung. The sea shimmers, waves low and gentle, the tide coming in. Achilles feels his way into a melody used to sing the deeds of Perseus, which he gives up, plong plung, for something Chiron taught him as a youth, Patroclus listening and pretending not to -- he doesn't remember what he was doing. Probably skinning whatever meat had been caught that day, or starting a fire. The song that goes with the music is about the beginnings of the world. First there was Chaos, and Chaos bore Darkness and Night. There was Earth, and Earth bore Heaven, who wrapped himself around her. Achilles' voice is mellow. Patroclus thinks, beneath the waves, Achilles' mother must be listening.
The song ends -- the reign of Zeus is established -- and Achilles sets down his lyre and groans. "This is a miserable little war."
They came here with a promise from the gods that Achilles would do great things, win a glorious reputation -- he would die a hero's death and be celebrated for all time. In the first year, he thought every day would be the day they would take the city. All the best men of Troy would fall before his sword. If there were no monsters to slay, there was at least this one, colossal war, something the world had never seen -- all the Achaians come together to fight not simply a city but the city most loved by Zeus, to tear down its god-built walls, to overpower its massive army of allies drawn from all Asia. Achilles marked the skill of the Trojan warriors: Hector, Aeneas, Sarpedon, Polydamas, Agenor. He rejoiced in their strength. When you sing the song of a hero, you do not say, he killed a man. You say, there was a man renowned for his might. He killed many warriors, he performed great feats, he was favoured by the gods and his courage never failed him. And this man was slain in fearsome battle by the hero of my song, who was far greater still.
Not long ago, Patroclus had one of his best days of the war. He killed twenty or thirty men. He encountered Deiphobus, son of Priam, and they fought a long time, with neither gaining the advantage. At sundown, Deiphobus proposed that they end their fight -- he spoke of Patroclus as one of the best of the Achaians, Patroclus spoke his admiration of Deiphobus, and they exchanged gifts as a sign of their mutual respect. Now Patroclus wears Deiphobus' sword belt when he goes out to battle; Deiphobus wears his. He could, he thinks, build a name for himself this way.
Achilles says, "Last week, I heard one of the prisoners tell of an island of giants, each as tall and as broad as ten men. If I could find them--"
Patroclus nods. He imagines a giant's skull, set up in Phthia with Peleus' and his forefathers' trophies.
"We could leave tomorrow," Achilles says. "Today."
"And leave the war?" And risk being only a deserter. Or if they find this magical island, for Patroclus to be Achilles' companion, standing by as he slays his giants, there to watch and to witness, so that, when Achilles has won enough glory and his death, Patroclus can bring the body home and tell the tale.
"This is no war at all. Every day, the same. Either we drive them back to their walls, and they hold us off, or they drive us back to our ships, where our line holds strong, or we meet in the middle, day after day, and no one gains. I win valueless prizes and kill men without names. When I fought Aeneas, I would have killed him, but his goddess mother stole him away. When I fought Hector, I had to run from the fight unfinished, when Penelaos was slain, or the Trojans would have taken his body to ransom or defile. Every day is the same. I have been here too long and spent too many years on nothing."
Patroclus' best answer, he thinks, would be to say that he'll stand by his allies, he'll stay here at Troy. The war grinds them down but the war will be remembered, to a certainty, and his part in it, perhaps. But still, what he wants to say more than that is: I'll go with you. Anywhere.
"There would be shame in leaving," he says, and hopes that Achilles will agree.
-----
Agamemnon oversees a fair distribution of the spoils of his raid, with equal shares for those who took part and those who remained with the camp. Because Agamemnon is king of kings, he gets first pick of the women; he chooses the most beautiful, Chryseis.
After three more days -- ordinary battle days -- a gorgeous ship draws along the shore to near where the Achaians are camped: not a ship you could take out to the open sea, but a coastal vessel, richly worked, with a gilt figurehead, an image of the sun. Men put ashore in small ships laden with gifts, and then, in the last of these, with a high, golden staff, comes Chryses, priest of Apollo, father of Chryseis. He and Agamemnon meet upon the strand; Chryses kneels and touches Agamemnon's feet. He asks for his daughter's release. The treasure he has brought seems enough to pay her ransom ten times over, and Achaian eyes shine, reflecting its glow. Yet Agamemnon refuses. He likes the girl. She is beautiful, he says, she is well born and has been taught a woman's work; she is everything a woman should be. Patroclus sees her father nod helplessly. Agamemnon says, the Achaians have enough treasure, and can take more when they want it. Or they can do without. To keep up the fight, they need only their meat and their weapons; they do not depend upon gold.
"And now," Agamemnon says, "leave this place. Your daughter will grow old as the companion of my bed. And you, if you wish to live, will keep away from me."
Chryses leaves with a prayer.
-
The plague begins on the following day. It goes like this: first, a man will feel weak. Often, he will sit down where he is, on the sand or where sand becomes grass, in his armour or out of it. He begins to sweat; his chest and brow grow hot, his cheeks livid red, as if he is burning from the inside. After two or three hours, often, he begins to claw at his skin with his nails. The men weep before they die, choking out sobs and whining. The sun burns in a bright blue sky.
Hundreds die between sunrise and sunset. Eight Myrmidons. Nine of the men who came with Ajax. Twenty-nine of the many who came from Argos with Agamemnon.
The Achaian leaders go to Calchas, who stares up at the stars and tells them what they can already guess. Apollo is angry at the mistreatment of his priest. Chryseis must be returned and the god appeased.
In the morning, as more men begin to sweat, Odysseus, still healthy and full of good colour, takes the girl in a ship with his strongest men and the five best heifers from the Achaians' stolen flocks, and gifts from their most recent raid. He will sacrifice to Apollo at Chryses' temple, and beg for the Achaians' forgiveness.
At noon, Patroclus sinks to his knees outside what was once Achilles' tent. Soon, his clothing is soaked with his sweat. The pain of the sickness seems to start in his elbows and knees and spread both in and out through his body, and soon, it feels like his flesh is melting and scalding his bones. He slips into terrible sleep.
He wakes, still sweating. He sleeps. He dreams of Apollo. He lunges at the god, his sword raised to attack -- or at least, he tries. His body freezes and Apollo laughs, his big, bright, sun god's voice making the whole earth shake.
Patroclus wakes, still alive, his skin damp and a little cold. The pain has left him. The men tell him that the plague is at an end.
-
The king of kings cannot have a lesser share of the spoils than others. With Chryseis gone, Agamemnon goes to Ajax to take his girl. You will be compensated, he says, when we conquer Troy. And: obey, or I will send enough men to take her by force.
There is a rumour going around the camp that in fact, Agamemnon went first to Odysseus. Odysseus pretended that his girl, Briseis, was out with the flocks, so that Agamemnon would doubt her value -- a girl Odysseus could find no better use for than to watch cattle.
Whilst one of his men supposedly went to fetch Briseis, Odysseus spoke to praise Agamemnon's wisdom in coming to him. His good leadership. Of course, noble Agamemnon must not be without a prize, a sign of his high place here amongst them; and yet, at the same time, he must not offend any other of the leaders of the Achaians, who had their own pride. How sensible to come to his friend, Odysseus, who would understand. And then, how excellent was Agamemnon's judgement in coming for Briseis! How he would be praised, for putting harmony with his fellows before carnal wants. And then, somehow the subject moved on, and Odysseus began to talk of Ajax' girl, her beauty of face and form -- how he envied Ajax, although he knew it was only right that, since he was now their greatest fighter, the best of all the Achaians still alive, Ajax should have the best of the women.
Agamemnon left without setting eyes on Briseis' lovely face.
Ajax sends his girl to Agamemnon's tent with four of his men as an escort, and his brother, Teucer, who carries the message that Ajax will fight no longer under the command of a man who has dishonoured him.
The next time the Achaians go out to fight, they go without Ajax, his brother and his Salaminian troops.
-
Agamemnon says, "I think he would trust you." His gaze strays to Odysseus, who is standing near, and then fixes itself, set and steady upon Patroclus -- perhaps his left shoulder. "You understand -- it is important to know his intentions. His state of mind. I am asking only to know what he will tell you." I am not asking outright for you to be my spy.
"I'll go to him," Patroclus says, and Agamemnon looks relieved.
And so Patroclus sets off, Achaian leaders watching, to Ajax' tent, at the far end of the Achaian encampment.
-
"I have often wished," Ajax says, "that I never came here."
Patroclus nods. They came here for a different war from the one they got.
Ajax stands inside his tent, in the shade, his strong arms at his sides, fists curled. His huge shield lies face-up on the floor; by its side, his sword and helmet look like toys. Outside, his men are enjoying their holiday, wrestling and running races on the sand.
Ajax says, "We go out each day, and what do we gain? Have you won glory here? Has any of us? At home, if they still think of us at all, they must think of us as men who are not strong enough to win their war, and not wise enough to come to terms with the Trojans. Who would offer Helen up by now, I think, if we gave enough payment in return."
It's possible that they might. But Agamemnon and Menelaus' attitudes have hardened as they have fought on, and they will not make the offer. After so long, and so many losses, Patroclus doesn't see how he could, in their position. What would it mean for all their men who have died?
"I thought I was honoured, at least," Ajax says. "I kept the camp safe, I fought harder than any other man, while Agamemnon played pirate with his brother and that sneaking wretch, their friend -- I kept their war alive. Now I see how little I am valued." He looks hungry for the fight, ready to take on an army of thousands. His right arm swings, forwards then back, muscle tightening. "If you are here to persuade me to rejoin the Achaians, you are wasting your time and risking your life."
"I'm not persuasive," Patroclus says. "I'm no Odysseus."
"No, you're not." Ajax almost laughs; then his thoughts seem to change their direction, his mouth tightens and he begins to pace. "One day, I think soon, he will regret this -- and Agamemnon will regret this. They will beg me to take up my place again at the front of the army. They will offer whatever I ask, and more. Because without me," he says, and reaches one wall of his tent and turns to storm back the way he has come; "without me, the Achaian ships will burn."
Ajax will stay here to see it, Patroclus thinks, or to see that they do not need him. Patroclus is used, by now, to men talking of leaving. They don't; not anyone with a name. There is too much shame in desertion, and too little to hope for elsewhere. Achilles always talked about the stories he heard, giants or sorceresses or sea monsters, but he never got good directions, or a map. He stayed where he knew there was a battle.
Ajax says, "Every day here is more worthless than the last. I don't know why any of us has kept on so long."
Patroclus shakes his head. "I need to." He steps in Ajax' path, so that he must either stop pacing or walk around him; Ajax stops still.
Patroclus says, "How could I give up the fight?" If you can't kill a god, you can kill the men of the city he loves, whose walls he helped build, whose prince he avenged. Every day, Patroclus dreams he will see the Trojan walls crumble, the city in flames. He can't leave until he has seen it or until he is dead -- and even then, they will bury his ashes here. Even if they are sailing back to their homes, he has made clear what he wants.
"I want something better than anything here," Ajax says.
"I don't think you want to die at home, in old age, in your bed." Neither of them does. What is there for the bards to sing about in a soft mattress and a soft, wrinkled old man?
"I want something better," Ajax says.
-----
The day Achilles defeated Hector, he thought it was the beginning of great things.
He brings Hector's body back to the Achaian camp. He will trade it for the highest of ransoms, the most splendid of the treasures of Troy. The tale of the death of Hector, the great glory of his killer, is making its way around and around the Achaians, picking up details from men here and there, growing already to something with the feel and flavour of one of the great stories of old.
"Tomorrow," Achilles says, "Aeneas. His mother must know what is fated. She will look down from Olympus as he is slain. This is my time." He seems to breathe in joy and certainty from the air. His eyes are alight; he is blazing with life. "Aeneas, Deiphobus, Paris, Polydamas."
"Agenor, Sarpedon." Patroclus' heart feels light. It is as though this is his victory too.
"The city itself. Within ten days, the city will fall."
"Five," Patroclus says.
Achilles' smile broadens "All right. Five."
And so it is agreed between them: in five days, the war will be won.