Chapter 50 A Fallen Star
They marched with the dawn.
The blasted notes of salpinges rang through the air, the horns chased by the thunder of drums. The earth quaked, the River Scamander trembling in its banks, as the bronze leviathan of the Greek army surged across the plain, each helmet a shining scale, each sword a spine.
Dust hazed the air, the city of Troy rearing through the tawny cloud like the skull of a rival primordial beast.
Danae’s heart beat in her throat as she tightened her grip on her mare’s reins, a small pack secured around her waist. In her other hand gleamed Poseidon’s golden trident.
Odysseus rode to her left, Hylas to her right.
Behind them, amongst the Ithacan soldiers, the full force of the Children of Prometheus regiment followed on foot, their circular shields reflecting the rising sun.
Ahead, in a vast patchwork of flags and metal, marched the rest of the allied Greek army: Achilles leading the charge with his Myrmidons in armour that shone brighter than starlight, followed by Nestor’s ten thousand men, shaven-headed Spartans, Arcadians with their great ash spears, plumed-helmed Argives, Phocēans, Laconians, Cretans, Aetolians, Epeans, Salamineans, Minyans and Boeotians, all led by Palamedes, Diomedes and the other generals riding horse-drawn chariots.
Mirroring the force on land, a score of hulking triremes cut across the iron-grey waters of the bay, sailing towards the Trojan harbour.
Between them, four sleek penteconters sliced through the waves, their hulls black as eels.
Gulls soared about their masts, their caws joining the piercing sound of the salpinges, hailing the destruction to come.
In the lead was Agamemnon’s ship, its prow dominated by a gilded figurehead of Zeus, a golden thunderbolt stretched across his painted chest. The King of Men stood above the King of Heaven on the prow deck, a crimson-plumed helm upon his head, a matching cape billowing in the lashing wind.
Fighting to quell the roiling in her gut, Danae glanced back at the first row of soldiers.
Telamon led a clutch of Children of Prometheus men, Atalanta another group, while the rest were scattered strategically through the Ithacan force.
They had all received their orders the previous night.
Once the gods were sighted in the sky, each group would focus on bringing them down into the fray with spears and arrows, then occupy them in battle while Danae delivered the killing blow.
Telamon caught Danae’s eye and winked. Her lips twitched, heart lifting for a beat.
Then her eyes slid past him to the soldier in the silver breastplate.
Atalanta marched with a brow as thunderous as the clouds threatening to devour the rising sun.
Knives glinted at her thighs and ankles, a broadsword was sheathed at her waist, and her trusty bow and arrows were slung across her chest. Danae’s stomach tightened at the fresh dent at the heart of Atalanta’s armour.
There had been no time to speak of what had passed between them before she fled the tent.
By the time Danae had returned to retrieve her weapons after conversing with Achilles on the shore, Atalanta had gone to prepare for battle.
Danae stared, willing the other woman to catch her eye.
I’m sorry.
I want you.
Please don’t die.
‘Dione.’
Reluctantly, Danae turned back.
Odysseus surveyed her from between the eye slits of his bronze helm.
‘Once we cross the Scamander, you and Hylas will remain at the riverbank while our force marches on. You must wait for the gods to appear. Do not engage until they have all been brought to the ground and are embroiled in fighting our men. We cannot risk any of them discovering you are here while they retain an aerial advantage.’
‘Understood.’ Danae tilted her face to the sky, ever watchful for a glint of gold or the wings of a flying horse.
‘Look.’ Hylas pointed towards the bay.
The Greek warships had dropped anchor just beyond the cove shielding the Trojan harbour and its vessels. Their smaller penteconters slipped ahead between the triremes, rows of lights blinking into being on their decks.
Danae drew a sharp breath as a scatter of flaming arrows seared the air, igniting Trojan sails, decking and oars until the entire enemy fleet was blazing. Black smoke billowed across the plain, ash floating like blossom on the wind.
The Greeks had claimed the bay.
‘It begins,’ murmured Odysseus.
Danae squinted through watery eyes as Agamemnon raised his sword above his head, then brought it slashing through the air. A heartbeat later the salpinges were blown once more, their sound echoed by other horns within the marching regiments.
Full-throated cries tore through the air, as the first rows of soldiers picked up the pace and surged towards the topless towers of Troy.
In different circumstances it would be foolhardy to attack such a well-defended city, but even a fortress such as Troy had never before been tested against an army of this magnitude.
Danae’s pulse quickened as Odysseus urged his steed out in front of his men, raising his sword.
‘Forward!’ he cried, then led the charge.
There was no time to look back for Atalanta as Danae and Hylas were forced to ride after the Ithacan king.
The waters of the River Scamander churned beneath makeshift bridges fashioned from planks laid by the first soldiers to cross the plain.
Danae pulled up her mare on the near bank as the fighters streamed past her, as though she were nothing but a rock in a current of molten bronze.
This was where she and Hylas must wait. She gazed around frantically, then spotted Atalanta’s silver breastplate on the far side of the river.
Her ears thrummed with the war cries of thousands of men as her world narrowed to one woman.
Atalanta did not look back.
Danae clenched her jaw so hard she almost bit through her lip, then again tilted her face to the sky.
‘Come on,’ she breathed.
Beside her, Hylas held his horse still. He looked every inch the soldier, with his blade sheathed at his side, his breastplate gleaming under his navy cloak, his chestnut curls whipping his face.
‘You should be out there, not waiting with me,’ she called against the clamour of the men.
Hylas looked at her as though she were the only person on the battlefield. ‘You should not have to wait alone.’
As the last of the Greek soldiers crossed the Scamander, movement aboard the ships drew Danae’s gaze back to the bay.
It looked as though each trireme was raising an additional mast, with weighted wooden contraptions at their bases and bulbous cups at their tips. Soldiers scurried about the decks, straining with ropes and levers.
‘What are those?’
Hylas smiled. ‘Daedalus’ invention.’
‘What do they do?’
‘You’ll see.’
Danae watched, coughing as the wind-blown smoke from the burning Trojan ships raked her throat.
The levers of Daedalus’ contraptions were released to catapult clods of fire, metal and rock into the air, smashing into Troy’s yellow stone walls.
Brick and dust exploded on impact in a gritty burst. Some of the ammunition made it over the walls and the burning buildings within sent plumes of black smoke into the clouds above.
A cheer rang out from the Greek army as they continued to surge towards the city.
After the initial volley, the walls were revealed to be scarred from the attack, but the triremes’ weapons hadn’t yet broken through.
‘Damn,’ Hylas cursed.
Danae’s neck began to ache as her eyes darted from land to sea to sky in a wary cycle.
As the ship’s vast catapults were reloaded, beneath her grip, the trident sang.
She’d spent the last precious hour before dawn draining what little vegetation and sea-life she could find near the camp to imbue the weapon with life-threads.
It had been intuitive, much easier than gifting the stick an ichor back on Delos.
The gold had absorbed her proffered threads like a sponge.
What’s more, they felt amplified inside the trident, as though the gods-forged metal was some kind of echo chamber for their power.
Once more the catapults were unleashed, and once more the high walls of Troy remained impenetrable.
‘I could blast through those walls.’
‘No.’ Hylas brought his horse between hers and the river. ‘If the Olympians saw you, they would surely not risk falling into our trap. They might destroy the entire Greek army from the sky like they did at Delphi.’
Danae’s chest tightened at the memory of the burning city.
All those people murdered because of her.
She clenched her jaw once more and set her sights on Troy and the masses of Greek soldiers now approaching the walls.
It was impossible from this distance to tell where Atalanta and Telamon were, or to distinguish the squadrons of Children of Prometheus fighters from the rest of the Greek army.
The sky darkened, a fleet of arrows hissing from longbows behind the Trojan defences. There were cries from below as the Greeks hurried to raise their shields.
Not all were swift enough.
When the troops pressed on, there were gaps in their previously seamless ranks, the bodies of their comrades left to bleed out in the dirt.
As another hail of arrows pierced the sky, the allied force split, spilling around the base of the walls like a serpent coiling its prey. Vast as the army was, they could not surround the entire city, but they could cut off access to and from the main gates, keeping the Trojan army penned inside.