“Shame on all of you!” shouts the son of Atreus at his bedraggled army. Only a hundredth of the men can hear him, of course, ancient acoustics being what they are, but Agamemnon has a powerful voice and those in the back pass the message on to others.

“Shame! Disgrace! You dress like splendid warriors, but it’s pure sham! You vowed to burn this city and you gorged yourself on cattle—bought at my expense!—and drank to the full those brimming bowls of wine—bought and shipped here at my expense!—and now look at you! Beaten rabble! You bragged that each of you could stand up to a hundred Trojans—two hundred!—and now you’re no match for one mortal man—Hector.

“Any minute Hector will be here with his hordes, gutting our ships with blazing fire, and this vaunted army of . . . heroes . . .”—Agamemnon all but spits the word—“will be fleeing home to wife and kids . . . at my expense!”

Agamemnon gives up on the army and lifts his hands to the southern sky, toward Mount Ida, from where the storms and thunder and lightning bolts have come. “Father Zeus, how can you tear away my glory so? How have I offended thee? Not once—I swear, not a single time!—have I passed a shrine of yours, not even on our ocean voyage here, but did I stop and burn the fat and thighs of oxen to your glory. Our prayer was simple—to raze Ilium’s walls to its roots, kill its heroes, rape its women, enslave its people. Is that too much to ask?

“Father, fulfill this prayer for me: let my men escape with their lives—at least that. Don’t let Hector and these Trojans beat us like rented mules!”

I’ve heard Agamemnon give more eloquent speeches—hell, all of the speeches I’ve heard from him have been more eloquent than this, and I understand Homer’s need to rewrite all this—but at that second a miracle occurs. Or at least the Achaeans take it as a miracle.

Out of nowhere, an eagle appears, flying from the south, a huge eagle, carrying a fawn in its talons.

The mob who had been surging toward their ships and safety on the seas and who paused only briefly for Agamemnon’s speech freeze in place and point at the sight of this.

The eagle soars, circles, dips lower, and drops the still-kicking fawn a hundred feet to a sandy bump right at the base of the stone altar the Achaeans had raised to Zeus upon their landing so many years ago.

That does it. After fifteen seconds of stunned silence, a roar goes up from the men—men beaten into cowardice ten minutes earlier, but a fighting mob now, hearts and hands strengthened by this clear sign of forgiveness and approval from Zeus—and without further ado, fifty thousand Achaeans and Argives and all the rest surge back into formation behind their captains, horses are re-tethered to chariots, chariots are driven out across the earth-bridges still spanning the defensive trenches, and the battle is on again.

It becomes the hour of the archer.

Although Diomedes leads the counterattack, followed closely by the Atrides, Agamemnon and Menelaus, followed in turn by Big Ajax and Little Ajax, and although these heroes take their toll on the Trojans in spearcasts and shortsword clashes, the fighting now is centered around the Achaean archer Teucer, bastard son of Telamon and half-brother to Big Ajax.

Teucer has always been considered a master-archer, and I’ve seen him shoot dozens of Trojans over the years, but this is his day in the limelight. He and Ajax get into a rhythm whereby Teucer crouches under the wall of his half-brother’s shield—Big Ajax uses a giant rectangular shield that military historians say wasn’t even in use during the time of the Trojan War—and when Ajax lifts the shield, Teucer fires from beneath it into the Trojan ranks some sixty yards away. On this day he can’t seem to miss his mark.

First he kills Orsilochus, putting a barbed arrow in the short man’s heart. Then he kills Ophelestes, putting a point through the captain’s right eye when the Trojan peeks above his rawhide shield. Then Daetor and Chromius fall mortally wounded from two fast, perfectly placed shots. Each time Teucer fires, the Trojans unleash their own arrows and spears in a vain attempt to kill the archer, but Big Ajax crouches over both of them and his massive shield deflects every missile.

The Trojan volleys pause, Ajax lifts his shield, and Teucer shoots Lycophontes, prince of his distant city, but just wounds the man. As Lycophontes’ captains rush to his aid, Teucer puts a second arrow into the fallen man’s liver.

Polymaeon’s son, Amopaon, falls next, Teucer’s shaft through his throat. Blood fountains five feet high and the powerful Amopaon tries to rise, but the arrow has pinned him to the ground, and he bleeds out in less than a minute, his body kicking and spasming ever more weakly. The Achaeans cheer. I know . . . knew . . . Amopaon. The Trojan used to eat in the little open restaurant where Nightenhelser and I liked to meet, and we’d spoken many a time of trivial things. He told me once that his father, Polymaeon, had known Odysseus in friendlier times, and once, when traveling to Ithaca and joining the friendly Greeks on a hunt, Polymaeon had killed a wild boar that had deeply gored Odysseus’ leg and would have killed him if Polymaeon’s spearcast had missed its mark. Amopaon told me that Odysseus bears the scar to this day.

Ajax crouches, holding his massive metal shield over him and his half-brother like a roof, and Trojan arrows rattle against it. Ajax rises, lifts the shield, and Teucer kills Melanippus—eighty yards away—with a shot that enters the man’s groin and protrudes from his anus as the Trojan falls. His comrades step away and grimace as Melanippus writhes on the ground and dies. The Achaeans cheer again.

Agamemnon swings down off his chariot and shouts encouragement at Teucer, promising the archer second choice of tripods or purebred teams of horses—if Zeus and Athena ever allow him to plunder the treasure troves of Troy, he says—and then promises Teucer a beautiful Trojan woman to bed as well, perhaps Hector’s wife, Andromache.

Teucer is angered by Agamemnon’s offer. “Son of Atreus, do you think I’ll try any harder than I already am, spurred on by your talk of plunder? I’m firing as fast and accurately as I can. Eight arrows—eight kills.”

“Shoot at Hector!” cries Agamemnon.

“I have been shooting at Hector,” screams Teucer, his face red. “All this time—Hector’s been my target. I just can’t hit the son of a bitch!”

Agamemnon falls silent.

As if responding to the challenge, Hector suddenly urges his chariot to the front of the Trojan ranks, trying to rally his men who’ve lost heart because of the archer’s slaughter.

Ajax doesn’t bother to lift his shield this time, because Teucer stands, goes to full draw, takes careful aim at Hector, and lets fly.

The shaft misses Hector’s heart by a hand’s breadth, striking Gorgythion as that son of Priam steps behind Hector’s chariot. The big man stops, looks surprised, stares down at the protruding shaft and feathers as if he is the butt of some barracks joke, but then Gorgythion’s head appears to become too heavy for his massive neck and falls limp to his shoulder as the weight of his helmet pulls it down; then Gorgythion falls dead in the blood-muddied sand.

“Damn!” says Teucer and fires again. Hector is the closest of all the Trojans now, turned full-torso toward Teucer.

This arrow catches Archeptolemus, Hector’s driver, full in the chest. The horses—war-trained as they are—rear and leap ahead as Archeptolemus’ blood geysers onto their flanks, and the young man pitches backward and off and into the dust.

“Cebriones!” cries Hector, grabbing the reins and calling to his brother—another bastard son of profligate Priam—to be his driver. Cebriones leaps up onto the chariot just as Hector jumps down. Enraged, beside himself with fury and grief at the death of his faithful Archeptolemus, Hector runs into no-man’s-land—a clear target for Teucer—and grabs the largest, sharpest rock he can lift in one hand.