The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus)

‘You’re right, of course. But it’s not Menelaus’s safety we should be worried about – it’s Helen’s when he finds her. Come on, then, let’s go after him.’

‘Look at all these throats, just waiting to be cut. And we’re tiptoeing around them as if they were mere babies.’

‘Keep your voice down, Ajax,’ Diomedes whispered, staring over his shoulder at the Locrian. ‘Once the gates are open you can spill as much blood as you like, but not before.’

They were picking their way through scores of Trojan warriors, who had made their beds on the main thoroughfare around a large, makeshift fire. The flames had died away but the red glow of the embers lit up the huddled shapes of the nearest, revealing bearded faces that had put behind them the horrors of war and were at peace. Some shared their blankets with wives, slaves or prostitutes, whose smooth faces were framed by tumbles of dark hair. These were the people who had resisted the Greeks so valiantly and for so long, Diomedes thought, and soon their ten-year struggle would be over. As he had climbed out of the belly of the horse, his sword arm had been eager to go to work – more so because Helen’s mocking words had filled him with an urgent, paranoid desire to get home and reassure himself of his wife’s fidelity while he had been away. But as he saw his sleeping enemies and considered the ignoble end that was approaching them, he was moved to an unusual pity. Though he hated them with a passion for prolonging the siege with their bitter resistance, he had also learned to respect them. They did not deserve to die in their sleep or just startled into wakefulness, fooled by the ruse of a clever trickster. To Diomedes’s mind, slaughter in the darkness lacked the glory of a battle under the blazing sun, in which Troy’s walls were scaled or her gates forced by an army of proud victors. But that army had died with Achilles and Great Ajax. The survivors would do anything to see Troy fall – Diomedes included – even if their own honour fell with it.

Diomedes stepped on an outstretched hand, unable to prevent his weight crushing the Trojan’s knuckles against the hard stone beneath. The man groaned and pulled his arm away. Diomedes’s sword was at his throat in an instant, waiting for the eyes to flicker open and see the dozen armed men standing about him. Instead, the man turned over and draped his arm across the woman at his side.

‘Come on,’ Diomedes hissed to the others.

They navigated their way free of the remaining bodies and looked at the dark mass of the walls, just a short way off now. The dense ceiling of cloud acted like a shroud, choking the city streets in blackness and making it impossible to see whether there were any soldiers on the Scaean Gate or the tower above. Even after a night of drunken victory celebrations it was unlikely there would be no guards at all, so Diomedes decided to approach with caution. He signalled for Philoctetes and Teucer to join him, then, telling the others to wait, led the two archers down to the gates. They crept from doorway to doorway until they reached the corner of a mud hovel, from which they could see the tall wooden portals and the guard tower that had repulsed every attack that had ever been thrown at them. The battlements above the gates had been removed stone by stone – just as Odysseus had said they would be if the horse was to be dragged into the city – leaving a wide, ugly gap in the walls. The gates were firmly shut and barred, though, and in the shadows beneath the tower stood four guards armed with helmets, shields and spears.

‘You see them?’ Diomedes asked.

His companions nodded.

‘We have to take them quietly. If just one of them raises the alarm, the rest of the guard will empty out of the tower and prevent us taking the gates. And if they wake the rest of the city, we’ll never be able to cut our way out again.’

‘We understand,’ said Philoctetes, sliding an arrow from his quiver and fitting it to Heracles’s horn bow. ‘We shoot a man each, then draw another arrow, aim and shoot again before the remaining guards realise what’s happening.’

‘And if we miss with either shot,’ Teucer added, ‘we alert the Trojans, get ourselves massacred and lose the war.’

Diomedes nodded and gave an apologetic shrug. Teucer grinned at him, then knelt, drew two arrows and pushed one into the ground. The other he fitted to his bow, pulling it back to his cheek and aiming along its long black shaft.

‘Back right,’ he whispered.

‘Back left,’ Philoctetes answered, ‘then front left. Now!’

The bowstrings hummed and Diomedes saw the two men closest to the gate jerk and fall. His heart beat fast and his throat thickened as he watched the remaining guards turn in surprise, then run towards their comrades. The bows hummed in unison a second time and the last two Trojans fell on top of the two who had died only moments before them.