Blood and Wine

No, my Lords. Would that I could be, but I am not your man. In this hour you need a man whose sight is clear, but in my gray old age, I see only the outlines of your faces. Most of all you need a man with firm legs and a strong right arm. Would that I were that man, but the truth, Lords, is that I can no longer stand without the support of my grandsons, and my spear arm grows cold through the winters of its long disuse. Fight against his summons as I may, the implacable Hades nevertheless draws me toward his halls. So, no, my Lords; though the peril is great, these are new days, and what you need are new men who are ready to pit iron against iron, for iron, I am told, is now the substance with which the invaders tip their spears.

Will you, my Lords, take wine?

Aye, that is so. When the fleet sailed for Ilium, I went as a henchman of my Lord Meriones, commanding a black hull in Lord Idomeneus's line. I led fifty spearmen from Gortyn of the Great Walls in that hour, hard men, all of them, and seasoned. None of us had more than thirty winters, and the bronze we carried bit deep. We struck the beach on that long first day not far from the banks of Scamander, leapt into the surf, waded ashore, and rushed to battle against a fierce Dardanian company from Adresteia. They were tall men, those warriors, blonde as ripe corn and led by Amphius of the linen corselet, a son of Merops of Percote. I engaged the man in battle, piercing his ox-hide shield with the first cast of my spear, but the gods ordained his survival, so, before I could press for a victory, his squires attacked me from two sides. One of their spears I took on my shield, the point piercing but failing to touch me, but in the same instant two more of those shrieking Dardanians charged from the opposite side, seeking to drive their spears beneath my chest plate. Had their war cries not alerted me to my danger, I think they might have drawn my life; but I swung my sword, parried their spears, and slashed the neck of the first man with the strength of my backswing even as his lunging body drove me to the ground. I was down then, moments after wading ashore, and my death was imminent, but, in the last moment left to me, my Lord Meriones drove his spear through the thigh of my attacker while one of my oarsmen dispatched the man with an axe.

"Rise, Talaus," said my Lord Meriones, helping me to my feet, "for our battle has barely begun."

I fought on, then, throughout the hours of that grim first morning, leading my company up beside the banks of Scamander toward the gleaming towers of Ilium that stood white in the distance. The Dardanians, swarming like hornets, put up frenzied resistance, the strength of their attacks sustained by the rage of their war cries. Their numbers seemed limitless, I remember, and for a long while—indeed, until Helios had reached his zenith—we were hard-pressed to advance and held our positions above the beach with tenuous tread. But, when Helios finally began to run his course toward the western horizon, I sensed a shift in the tide of battle. By that time, I think, the Myrmidons with the great Achilles in their van had finally beached and come ashore, throwing their full weight into the center of our line; and, when they did, the Dardanians began to shrink. If that was the fact, I never saw its confirmation; I was not present to witness the Trojan retreat. Leading my oarsmen between high boulders beside Scamander, I was struck down from the side by a Dardanian spearman who rammed his long bronze blade into my leg just behind the knee, and in the next instant I took a flint-tipped arrow through the same joint and came to grief. What happened after...