Book 13

Book 13: The Fight at the Ships The wall is breached and the battle spills onto the beach, where there are no walls left to hide behind only hulls and salt water. Zeus looks away toward Thrace, and his brother Poseidon sees his chance: disguising himself as Calchas, he rallies the despairing Greeks and breathes courage back into their chests. The sons of Atreus stand fast, and beside them the Cretan Idomeneus proves why the old stories call him the equal of any Achaean, trading blows with Deiphobus as Meriones runs for a spear and finds only iron where hope was meant to be. Hector fights at the stern of Ajax's ship like the tide itself, wave after wave, wearing the rock down, while Ajax, magnificent at the gangways, holds the line with a spear as long as a mast. On either side the bravest fall, and the gods take sides among the fallen, breathing fear into the Trojans and fury into the Greeks. The wall broke. The ships will not. Not yet. But Zeus is looking away, and Patroclus is watching.