The Hittite by Ben Bova Page A

and smiling despite their lack of goods.
    “You bring a day of peace,” the courtier told me. “Farmers can bring their produce to market this morning. Woodcutters can go out to the forest and bring back fuel before night falls. The people are grateful for that.”
    “The siege has hurt you,” I murmured.
    “ To some extent, of course. But we are not going hungry. There is enough grain stored in the royal treasury to last for years! The city’s water comes from a spring that Apollo himself protects. And when we really need firewood or cattle or anything else, our troops escort the necessary people on a foray inland.” He lifted his gray-bearded chin a notch or two. “ We will not starve.”
    I said nothing.
    He took my silence for agreement. “Look at those walls! The Achaians will never scale them.”
    I followed his admiring gaze down a crooked alley and saw thetowering walls that rose above the houses. They did indeed look high and strong and solid. But I had led Hatti troops past walls that were even higher and thicker, more than once.
    “Apollo and Poseidon helped old King Laomedon build those walls, and they have withstood every assault made on them. Of course, Herakles once sacked the city, but he had divine help and still even he didn’t dare try to breach those walls. He attacked over on the western side, where the oldest wall stands. But that was long ago.”
    I perked up my ears. The western wall was weaker? As if sensing he had said too much, my guide lapsed into a red-faced silence. We walked the rest of the way to the palace without further words.
    Men-at-arms held their spears stiffly as we passed the crimson-painted columns at the front of the palace and entered its cool, shadowed interior. I saw no marble, which surprised me. Even in distant Hattusas, the peoples of the Aegean Sea were known for their splendid work in marble. Instead, the columns and the thick palace walls were made of a grayish, granitelike stone, polished to gleaming smoothness. Inside, the walls were plastered and painted in bright yellows and reds, with blue or green borders running along the ceilings.
    The interior of the palace was actually cold. Despite the heat of the morning sun those thick stone walls insulated the palace so well that I almost imagined I could see my breath frosting in the shaded air.
    The hall beyond the entrance was beautifully decorated with painted landscapes on its plastered walls: scenes of lovely ladies and handsome men in green fields rich with towering trees. No battles, not even hunting scenes. No proclamations of royal power or fighting prowess.
    Statues lined this corridor, most of them life-sized, some smaller, several so huge that their heads or outstretched arms scraped the polished beams of the high ceiling.
    “The city’s gods,” my courtier explained. “Most of these statues stood outside our four main gates, before the war. Of course, we brought them in here for safekeeping from the despoiling Achaians. It wouldn’t do for them to capture our gods! What fate would befall us then?”
    “Indeed,” I muttered.
    Some of the statues were made of marble, most of wood. All were brightly painted. Hair and beards were deep black, tinged with blue. Gowns and tunics were mostly gold, and real jewels adorned them. The flesh was delicately colored, and the eyes were painted so vividly they almost seemed to be watching me.
    I could not tell one of their gods from another. The males were all broad-shouldered and bearded, the goddesses ethereally beautiful. Then I recognized Poseidon, the sea god, a nearly naked, magnificently muscled figure who bore a trident in his right hand.
    We stepped out of the chilly entrance hall and into the warming sunlight of a courtyard. A huge statue, much too large to fit indoors, stood just before us. I craned my neck to see its face against the crystal-blue morning sky.
    “Apollo,” said the courtier. “The protector of our city.”
    We started across the