‘Very well, then, will you agree to this, Prince Hektor?’ Agamemnon asked some time later. ‘Here among us are the two parties concerned in the beginning of it all. Menelaos and Paris. Let them duel in the open between our two armies, the winner to dictate the terms of a peace settlement.’
If Paris didn’t look a brilliant duellist, Menelaos looked even less brilliant. It took Hektor no more than an instant to decide that Paris was an easy winner. ‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘My brother Paris to duel with your brother Menelaos, the winner to dictate the terms of a treaty.’
I peered at Odysseus, who sat beside me.
‘For the sake of Agamemnon’s reputation in years to come, Nestor, let’s hope it’s a Trojan who has to break up the duel,’ he whispered to me.
We withdrew to our lines and left the hundred paces of vacant ground to the two men, Menelaos testing his shield and spear, Paris preening himself complacently. They circled each other slowly, Menelaos making lunges with his spear, Paris ducking. Someone in the ranks behind me called out a jeering remark which made a thousand Trojan throats rumble, but Paris ignored the insult and dodged on daintily. I had never given Menelaos much credit for anything, but Agamemnon obviously knew what he was about in proposing this duel. I had deemed Paris an easy winner, but I was wrong. Though Menelaos would never have the dash and instinct which make a leader of men, he had learned the art of the duel as conscientiously as he learned everything. He lacked spirit, not courage, which meant he showed to very good advantage in single combat. When he hurled his spear it plucked Paris’s shield away; faced with a drawn sword, Paris chose to run rather than draw his own. He took to his heels with Menelaos hard after him.
Everyone could see who was going to win now; the Trojans were very silent, our men were cheering lustily. My eyes remained on Hektor, who had judged wrongly and was a man of high principle. If Menelaos killed Paris, he would have to treat. Ah! Without any signal from Hektor, Pandaros the captain of the Royal Guard quickly nocked an arrow. I shouted to Menelaos, who stopped and sprang to one side. Amid a howl of outrage from the host at my back, Menelaos stood with the arrow quivering in his flank. A howl of grief from the Trojan side greeted the fact that it was a Trojan broke the truce. Hektor was branded dishonourable.
The armies flung themselves into the fight with a fury that had been absent during the morning; one side was in defence of tainted honour, the other was out to avenge an insult, and both sides hacked and hewed in screaming frenzy. Men fell thickly; the hundred paces which had separated the lines dwindled until there was only a solid mass of bodies and the dust underfoot rose in clouds, blinding and choking us. The guilty man, Hektor, was everywhere at once, ranging up and down the centre in his car, his spear darting viciously. None of us could get close enough to him to try a lucky cast, while men died in fear beneath the hooves of his three black horses. How he forced his team through the frightful crush of men I couldn’t understand on that first day of pitched battle, though later on it grew so commonplace that I did it myself and thought nothing of it. I saw Aineas looming with a pack of Dardanians in his wake, and wondered in the midst of the mêlée how he had managed to come in from his wing. My spear abandoned in favour of my sword, I rallied my men and drove into the thick of it, laying about me from my car, hacking without choice at sweat-grimed faces, keeping Aineas in sight as I shrieked the call for reinforcements.
Agamemnon sent more men, Ajax in their lead. Aineas saw him coming and called off his dogs, but not before I had the privilege of seeing that veritable tower of a man lay about him, his arm a tireless sickle cutting down the enemy chaff. He hadn’t got his axe, having chosen on this first day of battle to use his sword, two-and-a-half cubits of double-bladed death. Though he used it like an axe, it seemed to me, swinging it around his head with a scream of fierce joy. He carried his enormous, wasp-waisted shield better than any other man alive; it never wavered as he held it just clear of the ground, its weight of bronze and tin covering him from head to toe. At his back came six mighty captains of Salamis, and beneath the shelter of the shield itself Teukros hid with his bow, unencumbered, nocking an arrow and letting it fly, taking another from his quiver in a series of movements so fluid they seemed continuous, flawlessly rhythmic. I saw Greek men too far away from him in the press to spot his bulk grin at each other and take heart just because they heard Ajax’s famous cry to Ares and the House of Aiakos: ‘Ai! Ai! Woe! Woe!’ he shrieked, punning on the meaning of his own name, throwing his derision in a thousand Trojan faces.
Surrounded for the moment by my own men, I raised my hand to him as he rolled towards me; Antilochos stood staring in awe, the reins of our team slack.
‘They’ve gone, old one,’ growled Ajax.
‘Even Aineas wouldn’t stop to face you,’ I said.
‘Zeus turn them into shades! Why won’t they stand and make a fight of it? But I’ll catch Aineas yet.’
‘Where’s Hektor?’
‘I’ve been searching for him all afternoon. The man’s a will o’ the wisp, and I always lag behind. But I’ll wear him down. Sooner or later we’ll meet.’
Shrill cries of warning sounded; we drew into formation as Aineas returned, bearing Hektor and a part of the Royal Guard. I looked at Ajax.
‘Here’s your chance, son of Telamon.’
‘I thank Ares for it.’ He shook his armoured shoulders to settle the weight of his cuirass and prodded Teukros gently with the toe of one vast boot. ‘Up, brother. This one is mine and mine alone. Guard Nestor and keep Aineas at bay for me.’
Teukros ducked from beneath the shield, his bright, devoted eyes unworried as he leaped up beside me and Antilochos. No one ever questioned his loyalty, though his mother was Priam’s own sister, Hesione.
‘Come, laddie,’ he said to my son, ‘drive us through these carcases and draw up with Aineas. We’ve work to do with him. King Nestor, will you cover me while I use my bow?’
‘Gladly, son of Telamon,’ I said.
‘Why is Aineas in the van, Father?’ Antilochos asked me as we moved off. ‘I thought he commanded a wing.’
‘So did I,’ Teukros answered when I did not.
My own men and some of Ajax’s Salaminians came with us to hold Aineas far enough away from Hektor to let Ajax force him into a duel. Yet once the pair engaged the fighting became halfhearted on both sides; we watched Hektor and Ajax far more closely than we watched where our missiles fell.
Ajax never used a chariot in battle, probably because one had never been built capable of supporting his weight plus Teukros and a driver. It was his habit instead to stand on the ground and pretend he was a chariot.
Bronze rang on bronze, an arm guard popped under the sudden expansion of muscles and fell to be crushed underfoot. They were evenly matched, Ajax and Hektor. They stood and parried face to face, while all about them the fighting slowly died away. Aineas caught my wandering attention with a shrill whistle.
‘This is too good to miss, my white-haired friend! I’d rather watch than fight, wouldn’t you? Truce is called by Aineas of Dardania!’
‘I agree to a truce until such time as the duel ends. Then if it’s Ajax who falls, I’ll defend his body and his armour with my life! But if it’s Hektor who falls, I’ll help Ajax steal his body and his armour from you! Truce is agreed by Nestor of Pylos!’
‘So be it!’
In the circle of faces no arm was raised. All around our territory the battle raged unabated while we neither moved nor spoke. My heart glowed as I watched Ajax. No drop in his guard, no exposure of his body from behind that colossal shield. Hektor danced like a living flame about his bulk, cleaving great slices out of the shield. Neither of them seemed to own a sense of time or an awareness of fatigue; moment after moment their arms rose and fell with undiminished power. Twice Hektor almost lost his shield, yet he took Ajax’s blade on his own and fought on, keeping shield and sword both despite the best Ajax could do. It was a long, vicious battle. One of them would see an opening and dart in only to be met with a blade, fight on undiscouraged.
