Chapter 195: The Beach

The arrows hit the first Greeks in the shallows.

Men who had jumped from the ships into waist-deep water, holding their shields above their heads, trying to form a line before they reached dry sand. The arrows came down on them — not in volleys, but in steady streams, the archers on the wall shooting at their own pace, picking targets.

Paris was on the eastern wall. He drew and released. Drew and released. Two hundred paces to the waterline. Each arrow found a man. Not a soldier in the mass — a man. A face. A gap between a shield and a helmet.

The first arrow struck a Greek captain in the neck. He fell backward into the water. The men behind him stumbled over his body.

The second arrow struck an oarsman who had grabbed a shield and was trying to climb out of the shallows. He dropped the shield and fell.

The third arrow struck the deck of a beached ship — hitting the helmsman, who slumped against the tiller. The ship drifted sideways, blocking the ship behind it.

Antenor watched Paris shoot. The old hunter did not speak. He shot his own arrows — slower, less precise, but steady. He aimed at the mass. Paris aimed at the man.

"Twelve," Paris said. He was counting.

"Twelve what," Antenor said.

"Twelve arrows. Twelve hits."

"Stop counting. Shoot."

Paris drew again.

The first wave stalled in the shallows.

The Greek soldiers who made it to the beach found no cover. The slope was bare — cleared weeks ago, every bush and stone removed so that nothing could shield a man climbing toward the wall. The logs lay above them, lashed and waiting. The oil was hot. The archers were shooting.

They formed a shield wall on the beach. Locked their shields, knelt behind them, and waited for the arrows to stop. The arrows did not stop. They came through the gaps — between shields, over shields, into the legs and arms of men who were not fully covered.

Hector watched from the wall.

"They are pinned on the beach," he said. "The second wave is coming. If we let them land, the beach falls."

He turned to Lysander. "I am going down."

Lysander looked at him. "Down to the beach."

"With the patrol. Two hundred men. We hit them before the second wave lands. Drive the first wave back into the water."

"That is a risk. If you are killed on the beach—"

"Then you hold the wall." Hector looked at him. No argument. No discussion. "Open the northern gate. I go out. I hit them. I come back. Close the gate behind me."

Lysander did not try to stop him. He knew Hector. He knew that this was not a decision. It was a statement of what was about to happen.

"The gate stays open until you return," Lysander said.

"Only until I return. If I do not return in thirty minutes, close it."

"Hector—"

"Thirty minutes. Close it. The wall is more important than one man."

He was gone.

Hector rode through the northern gate with two hundred men.

The patrol — mounted, armoured, the best fighters in the garrison — hit the Greek beachhead at full speed. The horses’ hooves churned the sand. The Greeks on the beach saw them coming and tried to reform. They were too slow.

Hector’s spear took the first man through the chest. He pulled the spear free and struck the second. The third raised his shield. Hector’s horse hit the shield at full gallop. The man flew backward, crashing into the men behind him.

The patrol followed. Two hundred men on horses, cutting through the Greek line on the beach. The Greeks were disorganised — still forming, still climbing out of the water, their shields wet and their footing unsure on the sand.

Hector’s men drove them back. Twenty paces. Thirty. The waterline was close. The first wave was being pushed into the sea.

Then the second wave arrived.

Thirty ships. Hitting the beach in a line, prows grinding into the sand, men pouring off the decks. Not disorganised this time. Not stumbling. Formed. Ready. They had watched the first wave die and they had learned.

The Greek reinforcements hit Hector’s patrol from three sides.

The fighting became close. Horses reared. Men fell. The sand turned red. Hector’s spear broke on a Greek shield — he drew his sword and fought on, cutting left and right, his horse spinning in the centre of the melee.

He killed four men in a minute. The Greeks around him fell back — not from fear, but from the reality that the man on the horse was not like other men. He was faster. Stronger. More precise. Every stroke of his sword was a death.

But there were too many.

For every Greek he killed, two more stepped off the ships. The beach was filling. The waterline was behind him now. He was surrounded by Greeks on three sides, his patrol was being cut to pieces, and the second wave was still coming.

"Fall back," Hector shouted. "To the gate. Fall back."

The patrol pulled back. The Greeks followed. Hector rode at the rear, his sword red, his horse tiring. An arrow struck his shield. Another struck his armour — the bronze deflected it, but the impact rocked him in the saddle.

The gate was ahead. Open. The patrol poured through it. Hector was the last man through. He turned his horse at the gate and looked back at the beach.

The Greeks were there. Hundreds of them. Forming lines. Raising standards. Digging in.

The beach was theirs.

Hector rode through the gate. It closed behind him.

The Greeks spent the rest of the day landing.

Ship after ship. Wave after wave. The beach filled with men, with horses, with supplies. Tents went up. Cookfires were lit. The noise carried across the water to the walls of Troy — the sound of fifty thousand men building a camp on a beach that had been empty that morning.

Lysander watched from the wall. He counted ships. He counted tents. He counted standards. The numbers were bad.

"They have the beach," Hector said. He was bleeding from a cut on his arm. He had not noticed it. Someone would bandage it later. Or he would not. It did not matter.

"They have the beach," Lysander agreed. "But not the wall. The beach is ground. The wall is stone. Ground can be taken. Stone must be broken."

"How many did we lose."

"Twenty-three. From the patrol and the wall. The Greeks lost more — perhaps a hundred in the shallows and on the beach. But they have fifty thousand. We do not."

Hector sat on the parapet. His sword lay across his knees. The blood on the blade was drying.

"The fire ships," he said.

"Three used. Three burned. Two Greek ships destroyed. Daidalos survived. He is in the medical wing. Burns on his hands. He will live."

"The remaining fire ships."

"Nine. In the eastern bay. They will hold the harbour for now."

Hector looked at the beach. The Greek camp was growing. Standards were visible — Agamemnon’s lion, Diomedes’s boar, Odysseus’s eagle. Each standard meant a king. Each king meant a contingent. Each contingent meant hundreds of men who would be sent against the wall.

"The oil," Hector said.

"Enough for three days of sustained attack. After that, we ration."

"The logs."

"One use. They roll, they break, they are done. The Greeks will climb over them after the first assault."

Hector was quiet. The wind pulled at his hair. Below, the Greek campfires burned — hundreds of them, stretching along the beach, a second city made of canvas and bronze and the intent to destroy the first.

"Tomorrow," Hector said.

"Tomorrow they test the wall."

"And the day after."

"The day after they attack."

Hector stood. He picked up his sword. He looked at the Greek camp one more time.

Then something caught his eye. A single figure on the beach. Standing apart from the camp. Not building. Not eating. Not talking. Standing at the waterline, looking up at the wall.

Golden hair. Golden armour. A spear in his hand that caught the last light of the sun.

Achilles.

He was looking at the wall. Not at the wall — at the men on it. At one man. Hector could feel it — the weight of that gaze, the way it found him among the hundreds of soldiers on the parapet, the way it held.

Achilles raised his spear. Not in threat. In recognition.

He had found the man he had come to kill.

Hector did not look away.

Lysander saw it. He stood behind Hector on the wall and watched the two men — the Trojan prince and the Greek warrior — looking at each other across the beach and the water and the dying light.

Neither spoke. Neither moved.

Then Achilles turned and walked back to his camp. The golden armour disappeared among the tents.

Hector let out a breath.

"He saw me," Hector said.

"Yes."

"That was him."

"Yes."

Hector was quiet for a moment.

"I am not afraid of him," he said.

"I know."

"I should be."

"Perhaps. But you are not. And that is either courage or folly."

"Is there a difference."

"No. Not really."

Hector almost smiled. Almost. The corners of his mouth moved. Then they stopped, and he was a king on a wall again, looking at a camp full of men who wanted to destroy his city.

"Get some sleep," Lysander said. "Tomorrow they come."

"So do I."

Hector walked toward the stairs. His sword hung at his side. His shield was on his back. The cut on his arm was still bleeding. He had not bandaged it.

Lysander watched him go.

Then he turned back to the wall and looked at the beach. The Greek campfires burned. Fifty thousand men. A thousand ships. The largest army the Greek world had ever assembled, camped on the sand below the walls of Troy.

The wall was stone. The army was flesh. Stone holds. Flesh breaks.

That was the theory.

Tomorrow they would find out if the theory was correct.