The Trojan War by Bernard Evslin Read Free Book Online

and shuffled forward. His shout was echoed by all the Greeks, for it was very fitting that he, the offended husband, should respond to the challenge of the abductor.
    “I’ll fight you!” he cried. “And a short fight it will be. I’ll tear out your guts with my bare hands.”
    Now Menelaus was no comfortable sight for an opponent. If his brother, Agamemnon, was a bull, he was a bear. Not very tall, but very wide, and bulging with muscle, clothed in a pelt of black hair from neck to ankle. Black-bearded, wearing black armor—helmet, breastplate, and greaves not of bronze like most of the others, but of iron—too heavy for most men to wear; iron pieces smoky and black as if they had just issued from Hephaestus’ forge. He carried an axe in one hand, and a huge iron-bossed bullhide shield in the other. Truly he was a fearsome sight slouching out of the Greek lines like an iron bear.
    Paris took one look and darted back into the Trojan lines, crying: “It’s not fair! He has full armor. I am clad only in a panther skin. I’ll fight any man alive, but a metal monster is something else!”
    His brother Hector, commander of the Trojan forces, turned on him.
    “You miserable cringing coward, you yellow-bellied dog. The oracle was right. You will bring disgrace and ruin on us all. Here we are, fighting a war started by you, and when a chance is given for you to strike a blow for yourself—something you should have been praying to the gods for—you skulk away. My father was right in his original impulse. He should have garroted you with your own umbilical cord. Dreadful was my mother’s misjudgment, saving you. Well, you are not free to disgrace yourself. You are a son of Priam, and when you bring shame on yourself, you shame us all. I will not permit this. Sooner will I break your pretty skull, here and now, explain that you have met with an unfortunate accident, and take up your challenge to Menelaus myself.”
    Paris, who thought quickly, said: “Peace, brother. It was I who issued the challenge—unprompted by you—and it is I who will fight. Please do not scourge me with that tongue of yours. You are my elder brother—my leader—but you have no right to say such things to me, because I chose to lighten the heavy moment with a jest or two. Truly, the thing I regret most about this war I started is that every day it makes the Trojans more like the Greeks. We are forgetting what laughter is. And that is a terrible casualty.”
    “I do not follow you,” said Hector. “Speak plainly. Are you going to fight or not?”
    “Certainly, I’m going to fight. I didn’t come to battle to exchange platitudes with you. But that man is clad in ugly armor from woolly pate to tufted toe. I, too, must armor myself.”
    “Brothers, lend him some pieces of armor,” said Hector. “I’ll start. Take my shield.”
    “Nay, brother,” said Paris. “It is too heavy for me. Troilus here will give me what I need. We are the same size.”
    And from Troilus, the brother next youngest to himself, also a very beautiful lad, he borrowed helmet, chestplate, and greaves. From Lyncaeus, an elder brother, he took a bronze-bossed oxhide shield.
    While Paris was armoring himself, Hector stepped out between the two armies and held up his arms for silence.
    “Worthy foes,” he said. “You have known me for nine long years and know that I do not shrink from a fight. So you will not take my proposal in the wrong spirit. But I think there is a kind of inspired justice about the idea of Paris and Menelaus meeting each other in single combat. Now I suggest this: If Paris wins, we keep Helen, and you depart, taking with you only the price of Helen’s bride-gift, which we will repay to Menelaus, or to his brother if Menelaus does not survive the fight. If, on the other hand, Menelaus leaves Paris in the dust, then he must take back his wife, plus an indemnity to be reckoned by joint council between us. Then, your cause having been won, you