THE slash of a whip across my bare back brought me to full awareness. "Pull, you big ox! Stop your daydreaming or you'll think Zeus's thunderbolts are landing on your shoulders!"
I was sitting on a rough wooden bench along the gunwale of a long, wallowing boat, a heavy oar in my hands. No, not an oar. A paddle. We were rowing hard, under a hot high sun. I could see the sweat streaming down the emaciated ribs and spine of the man in front of me. There were welts across his nut-brown skin.
"Pull!" the man with the whip roared. "Stay with the beat."
I wore nothing but a stained leather loincloth. Sweat stung my eyes. My back and arms ached. My hands were callused and dirty.
The boat was like a Hawaiian war canoe. The prow rose high into a grotesquely carved figurehead; some fierce demonic spirit, I guessed, to protect the boat and its crew. I glanced swiftly around as I dug my paddle into the heaving dark sea and counted forty rowers. Amidships there were bales of goods, tethered sheep and pigs that squealed with every roll of the deck.
The sun blazed overhead. The wind was fitful and light. The boat's only sail was furled against its mast. I could smell the stench of the animals' droppings. Toward the stern a brawny bald man was beating a single large mallet on a well-worn drum, as steady as a metronome. We drove our paddles into the water in time with his beat—or took a sting from the rowing master's whip.
Other men were gathered down by the stern, standing, shading their eyes with one hand and pointing with the other as they spoke with one another. They wore clean knee-length linen tunics and cloaks of red or blue that went down to midcalf. Small daggers at their belts, more for ornamentation than combat, I judged. Silver inlaid hilts. Gold clasps on their cloaks. They were young men, lean, their beards light. But their faces were grave, not jaunty. They were looking toward something that sobered their youthful spirits. I followed their gaze and saw a headland not far off, a low treeless rocky rise at the end of a sandy stretch of beach. Obviously our destination was beyond that promontory.
Where was I? How did I get here? Frantically I ransacked my mind. The last firm memory I could find was of a beautiful, tall, gray-eyed woman who loved me and whom I loved. We were... a shudder of blackest grief surged through me. She was dead.
My mind went spinning, as if a whirlpool had opened in the dark sea and dragged me down into it. Dead. Yes. There was a ship, a very different ship. One that traveled not through the water but through the vast emptiness between stars. I had been on that ship with her. And it exploded. She died. She was killed. We were both killed.
Yet I lived, sweaty, dirty, my back stinging with welts, on this strangely primitive oversized canoe heading for an unknown land under a brazen cloudless sky.
Who am I? With a sudden shock of fright I realized that I could remember nothing about myself except my name. I am Orion, I told myself. But more than that I could not recall. My memory was a blank, as if it had been wiped clean, like a classroom chalkboard being prepared for a new lesson.
I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself to think about that woman I had loved and that fantastic star-leaping ship. I could not even remember her name. I saw flames, heard screams. I held her in my arms as the heat blistered our skins and made the metal walls around us glow hell-red.
"He's beaten us, Orion," she said to me. "We'll die together. That's the only consolation we will have, my love."
I remembered pain. Not merely the agony of flesh searing and splitting open, steaming and cooking even as our eyes were burned away, but the torture of being torn apart forever from the one woman in all the universes whom I loved.
The whip cracked against my bare back again.
"Harder! Pull harder, you whoreson, or by the gods I'll sacrifice you instead of a bullock once we make landfall!"
He leaned over me, his scarred face red with anger, and slashed at me again with the whip. The pain of the lash was nothing. I closed it off without another thought. I always could control my body completely. Had I wanted to, I could have snapped this hefty paddle in two and driven the ragged end of it through the whipmaster's thick skull. But what was the sting of his whip compared to the agony of death, the hopelessness of loss?
We rowed around the rocky headland and saw a calm sheltered inlet. Spread along the curving beach were dozens of ships like our own, pulled far up on the sand. Huts and tents huddled among their black hulls like shreds of paper littering a city street after a parade. Thin gray smoke issued from cook fires here and there. A pall of thicker, blacker smoke billowed off in the distance.
A mile or so inland, up on a bluff that commanded the beach, stood a city or citadel of some sort. High stone walls with square towers rising above the battlements. Far in the distance, dark wooded hills rose and gradually gave way to mountains that floated shimmering in the blue heat haze.
The young men at the stern seemed to get tenser at the sight of the walled city. Their voices were low, but I heard them easily enough.
"There is it," one of them said to his companions. His voice was grim.
The youth next to him nodded and spoke a single word.
"Troy."
WE landed, literally, driving the boat up onto the beach until its bottom grated against the sand and we could go no farther. Then the whipmaster bellowed at us as we piled over the gunwales, took up ropes, and—straining, cursing, wrenching the tendons in our arms and shoulders—we hauled the pitch-blackened hull up onto the beach until only its stern and rudder paddle touched the water.
Hardly any tide to speak of, I knew. When they finally sail past the Pillars of Herakles and out into the Atlantic, that's when they'll encounter real tides.
Then I wondered how I knew that.
I did not have time to wonder for long. The whipmaster allowed us a scant few moments to get our breath back, then he started us unloading the boat. He roared and threatened, shaking his many-thonged whip at us, his cinnamon-red beard ragged and tangled, the scar on his left cheek standing out white against his florid frog's-eyed face. I carried bales and bleating sheep and squirming, foul-smelling pigs while the gentlemen in their cloaks and linen tunics and their fine sandals walked down a gangplank, each followed by two or more slaves who carried their goods, mostly arms and armor, from what I could see.
"Fresh blood for the war," grunted the man next to me, with a nod toward the young noblemen. He looked as grimy as I felt, a stringy old fellow with skin as tanned and creased as weather-beaten leather. His hair was sparse, gray, matted with perspiration; his beard, mangy and unkempt. Like me, he wore nothing but a loincloth; his skinny legs and knobby knees barely seemed strong enough to tote the burdens he carried.
There were plenty of other men, just as ragged and filthy as we, to take the bales and livestock from us. They seemed delighted to do so. As I went back and forth from the boat I saw that this stretch of beach was protected by an earthenwork rampart studded here and there with sharpened stakes.
We finished our task at last, unloading a hundred or so massive double-handled jugs of wine, as the sun touched the headland we had rounded earlier in the day. Aching, exhausted, we sprawled around a cook fire and accepted steaming wooden bowls of boiled lentils and greens.
A cold wind blew in from the north as the sun slipped below the horizon, sending sparks from our little fire glittering toward the darkening sky.
"I never thought I'd be here on the plain of Ilios," said the old man who had worked next to me. He put the bowl to his lips and gobbled the stew hungrily.
"Where are you from?" I asked him.
"Argos. My name is Poletes. And you?"
"Orion."
"Ah! Named after the Hunter."
I nodded, a faint echo of memory tingling the hairs at the back of my neck. The Hunter. Yes, I was a hunter. Once. Long ago. Or—was it a long time from now? Future and past were all mixed together in my mind. I remembered...
"And where are you from, Orion?" asked Poletes, shattering the fragile images half-forming in my mind.
"Oh," I gestured vaguely, "west of Argos. Far west."
"Farther than Ithaca?"
"Beyond the sea," I answered, not knowing why, but feeling instinctively that it was as honest a reply as I could give.
"And how came you here?"
I shrugged. "I'm a wanderer. And you?"
Edging closer to me, Poletes wrinkled his brow and scratched at his thinning pate. "No wanderer I. I'm a storyteller, and happy was I to spend my days in the agora, spinning tales and watching the faces of the people as I talked. Especially the children, with their big eyes. But this war put an end to my storytelling."
"How so?"
He wiped at his mouth with the back of his grimy hand. "My lord Agamemnon may need more warriors, but his faithless wife wants thetes."
"Slaves?"
"Hah! Worse off than a slave. Far worse," Poletes grumbled. He gestured to the exhausted men sprawled around the dying fire. "Look at us! Homeless and hopeless. At least a slave has a master to depend on. A slave belongs to someone; he is a member of a household. A thes belongs to no one and nothing; he is landless, homeless, cut off from everything except sorrow and hunger."
"But you were a member of a household in Argos, weren't you?"
He bowed his head and squeezed his eyes shut, as if to block out a painful memory.
"A household, yes," he said, his voice low. "Until Queen Clytemnestra's men booted me out of the city for repeating what every stray dog and alley cat in Argos was saying—that the queen has taken a lover while her royal husband is here fighting at Troy's walls."
I took a sip of the rapidly cooling stew, trying to think of something to say.
"At least they didn't kill you," was all I could come up with.
"Better if they had!" Poletes replied bitterly. "I would be dead and in Hades and that would be the end of it. Instead, I'm here, toiling like a jackass, working for wages."
"That's something, anyway," I said.
His eyes snapped at me. "You are eating your wages, Orion."
"This... this is our payment?"
"For the day's work. Exactly. Show me a thes with coin in his purse and I'll show you a sneak thief."
I took a deep breath.
"Lower than slaves, that's what we are, Orion," said Poletes, in a whisper that was heavy with overdue sleep. "Vermin under their feet. Dogs. That's how they treat us. They'll work us to death and let our bones rot where we fall."
With a heavy sigh Poletes put his empty bowl down and stretched out on the sandy ground. It was getting so dark that I could barely see his face. The pitiful little fire had gone down to nothing but embers. The wind blowing in from the water was cold and sharp. I automatically adjusted my blood flow to keep as warm as possible. There were no blankets or even canvas tarpaulins among the sprawled bodies of the exhausted thetes. They slept in their loincloths and nothing else.
I lay down beside the old man, then found myself wondering how old he could truly be. Forty, perhaps. I doubted that anyone lived much past fifty in this primitive time. A pair of mangy dogs snarled at each other over some bones by the fire, then settled down side by side, better protected against the night than we were.
Just before I closed my eyes to sleep, I caught sight of the beetling towers of Troy bulking dark against the deepening violet sky.
Agamemnon. Troy. How did I get here? How long could I survive as something lower than a slave?
Falling asleep was like entering another world. My dream was as real as life. I thought perhaps it was life, a different life on a different plane of existence.
I stood in a place that had neither time nor dimension. No land, no sea, no sky. Not even a horizon. A great golden glow surrounded me, stretching away to infinity on every side, warm and so bright that it dazzled my eyes. I could see nothing except its radiance.
Without knowing why, I began to walk. Slowly at first, but soon my pace quickened, as if I knew where I was heading and why. Time was meaningless here, but I walked endlessly, my bare feet striking something firm beneath me, though when I looked down all I could see was the gleaming golden light.
And then, far, far off, I saw a brilliance that outshone everything else. A speck, a spot, a source of radiance that blazed pure gold and drew me forward like a magnet draws a sliver of iron, like the fiery sun draws a falling comet.
I ran, I flew toward that burning golden glow. Breathlessly I raced to it, my eyes painfully dazzled, my heart thundering wildly, the breath rasping in my throat.
I stopped. As if an invisible wall had risen before me. As if my body had suddenly become paralyzed.
I stopped and slumped to my knees.
A human form sat before me, elevated above my level, resting on nothing more substantial than golden light. He was the source of all the radiance. He shone so beautifully that it hurt my eyes to look upon him. Yet I could not look away.
He was splendid. Thick mane of golden hair, gold-flecked eyes. Skin that glowed with life-giving radiance. Utterly handsome face, masculine yet beautiful, calm and self-assured, the hint of a smile curling his lips. Broad shoulders and wide hairless chest. Bare to the waist, where draperies of gleaming gold enfolded him.
"My poor Orion." His smile turned almost mocking. "You are certainly in a sorry state."
I did not know what to reply. I could not reply. My voice froze in my throat.
"Do you remember your Creator?" he asked, tauntingly.
I nodded dumbly.
"Of course you do. That memory is built so deeply into you that nothing but final destruction can erase it."
I knelt before my Creator, my mind whirling with faint half memories, struggling to find my voice, to speak, to ask him...
"Do you remember my name?" he asked.
Almost, I did.
"No matter. For the present you may call me Apollo. Your companions on the plain of Ilios refer to me by that name."
Apollo. The Greek god of light and beauty. Of course. The god of music and medicine—or is it biotechnology, I wondered. But I seemed to recall that he had another name, another time. And there were other gods, as well. And a goddess, the one whom I loved.
"I am being harsh with you, Orion, because you disobeyed me in the matter of Ahriman. You deliberately twisted the course of the continuum, out of sentiment."
"Out of love," I replied. My voice was weak, gasping. But I spoke.
"You are a creature, Orion," he sneered. "What can you know of love?"
"The woman," I pleaded. "The goddess..."
"She is dead."
His voice was as coldly implacable as fate. I felt ice freezing my veins.
"You killed her," I said dully.
His sneering smile faded into grim solemnity. "In a sense, Orion, it was you who killed her. By daring to love a goddess, by tempting her to assume a human form, you sealed her doom."
"You blame me..."
"Blame? A god does not blame, Orion. A god punishes. Or rewards. You are being punished—for the while. Accept your fate and your punishment will cease."
"And then?"
His smile returned. "I have other tasks for you, my creature, after the Trojans have beaten off these Greek barbarians. Don't be afraid, I don't plan on letting you die again, not for a while. There is much work for you to do in this era."
I began to ask him what he meant, but a sandaled foot prodded my ribs and I opened my eyes to see that I was on the beach among the Greeks who were besieging Troy, a thes, the lowest of the low.
"On your feet! There's work to be done!" shouted the whipmaster.
I looked up at him but saw instead the blinding radiance of the morning sun. I winced and bowed my head.
WE were given a bowl of thin barley gruel and then set to work with wooden shovels on the earthworks defending the beach.
While the warriors ate a leisurely breakfast of mutton and flat bread, and their men-at-arms yoked horses to chariots and sharpened swords and spears, we lumbered out through one of the makeshift gates in the low rampart that had been heaped up along the beach. Our task this fine, windy morning was to deepen the trench in front of the mound and pile the diggings atop it. This would make it even harder for Trojan troops or chariots to reach the ships.
We worked a good part of the morning. The sky was a sparkling bowl of wondrously clear, cloudless blue, dotted by screeching white gulls soaring above us. The sea was an even deeper blue, restless with flecks of white-foamed waves. Grayish brown humps of islands rose above the distant horizon. In the other direction, Troy's towers and beetling walls seemed to glower down at us from across the plain. Beyond it the distant hills were dark with trees and beyond them rose the hazy mountains.
The wind strengthened into a brisk gusting breeze as the sun rose higher, helping to keep us cool as we dug and emptied our shovels of sandy soil into woven baskets that were carried to the top of the mound by other thetes.
As I dug and sweated, I thought about my memories of the night. It was no dream, I was certain of that. The Golden One really existed, whether he called himself Apollo or some other name from an earlier existence. I dimly remembered knowing him from another time, another era—him, and a dark, brooding hulking presence. The one he called Ahriman, I thought. And the goddess, the woman I loved. The woman who was dead. The Golden One said I was responsible for her death. Yet I knew that he had set in motion the train of events that ended with our starship exploding. He had killed her, killed us both. Yet somehow he had revived me, placed me here in this time and place, alone and bereft of memory.
But I did remember. A little, anyway. Enough to know I hated the Golden One for what he had done to me. And to her. I tightened my callused hands on the shovel, anger and the hollow empty feeling of heartsickness driving me. None of the other thetes were pushing themselves and the work went slowly, mainly because the whipmaster and the other overseers ignored us, spending their time at the top of the mound where they could ogle the camp and the noblemen in their splendid bronze armor.
Achaians, they called themselves. I heard it from the men laboring around me. It would be another thousand years before they began to think of themselves as Greeks. They were here besieging Troy, yet they seemed worried that the Trojans would break through these defenses and attack the camp. There is trouble among the Achaians, I thought.
And the Golden One said that the Trojans were going to beat off their besiegers.
Poletes had been picked to carry baskets of dirt from down where we were digging up to the top of the rampart. At first I thought this was too much of a burden for his skinny old legs, but the baskets were small and carried only a light load, and the overseers were lax enough to let the load-carriers meander up the slope slowly.
The old man spotted me among the diggers and came to me.
"All is not well among the high and mighty this morning," he whispered to me, delighted. "There's some argument between my lord Agamemnon and Achilles, the great slayer of men. They say that Achilles will not leave his tent today."
"Not even to help us dig?" I joked.
Poletes cackled with laughter. "The High King Agamemnon has sent a delegation to Achilles to beseech him to join the battle. I don't think it's going to work. Achilles is young and arrogant. He thinks his shit smells like roses."
I laughed back at the old man.
"You there!" The whipmaster pointed at us from the top of the mound. "If you don't get back to work I'll give you something to laugh about!"
Poletes hoisted his half-filled basket up to his frail shoulders and started climbing the slope. I turned back to my shovel.
The sun was high in the cloudless sky when the wooden gate nearest me creaked open and the chariots started streaming out, the horses' hooves thudding on the packed-earth ramp that cut across the trench. All work stopped. The overseers shouted for us to come up out of the trench and we scrambled eagerly up the slope of the rampart, happy to watch the impending battle.
Bronze armor glittered in the sun as the chariots arrayed themselves in line abreast. Most were pulled by two horses, though a few had teams of four. The horses neighed and stamped their hooves nervously, as if they sensed the mayhem that was in store. There were seventy-nine chariots, by my count. Quite a bit short of the thousands that the poets sang about.
Each chariot bore two men, one handling the horses, the other armed with several spears of different weights and length. The longest were more than twice the height of a warrior, even in his bronze helmet with its horse-hair plume.
Both men in each chariot wore bronze breastplates, helmets, and arm guards. I could not see their legs but I guessed that they were sheathed in greaves, as well. Most charioteers carried small round targes strapped to their left forearms. Each warrior held a figure-eight shield that was nearly as tall as he was, covering him from chin to ankles. Every man bore a sword on a baldric that looped over his shoulder. I caught the glitter of gold and silver on the handles of the swords. Many of the charioteers had bows slung across their backs or hooked against the chariot rail.
A shout went up as the last chariot passed through the gate and along the trodden-smooth rampway that crossed our trench. The four horses pulling it were magnificent matched blacks, glossy and sleek. The warrior in it seemed stockier than most of the others, his armor filigreed with gold inlays.
"That's the High King," said Poletes, over the roar of the shouting men. "That's Agamemnon."
"Is Achilles with them?" I asked.
"No. But that giant there is Great Ajax," he pointed, excited despite himself. "There's Odysseus, and..."
An echoing roar reached us from the battlements of Troy. A cloud of dust showed us that a contingent of chariots was filing out of a gate to the right side of the city, winding its way down an incline that led to the plain before us.
Ground troops were hurrying out of our gates now, men-at-arms bearing bows, slings, axes, cudgels. A few of them wore armor or chain mail, but most of them had nothing more protective than leather jerkins, some studded with bronze pieces.
The two armies assembled themselves facing each other on the windswept plain. A fair-sized river formed a natural boundary to the battlefield on our right, while a smaller stream defined the left flank. Beyond their banks on both sides the sandy ground was green with tussocks of long-bladed grass, but the battlefield had been worn bare by chariot wheels and the tramping feet of soldiery.
For nearly a half hour, nothing much happened. Heralds went out and spoke with each other while the dust drifted away on the wind.
"None of the heroes are challenging each other to single combat today," explained Poletes. "The heralds are exchanging offers of peace, which each side will disdainfully refuse."
"They do this every day?"
"So I'm told. Unless it rains."
"Did the war really start over Helen?" I asked.
Poletes shrugged elaborately. "That's the excuse. And it's true that Prince Aleksandros abducted her from Sparta while her husband's back was turned. Whether she came along with him willingly or not, only the gods know."
"Aleksandros? I thought his name was Paris."
"He is sometimes called Paris. But his name is Aleksandros. One of Priam's sons." Poletes laughed. "I hear that he and Menalaos, the lawful husband of Helen, fought in single combat a few days ago and Aleksandros ran away. He hid behind his foot soldiers! Can you believe that?"
I nodded.
"Menalaos is Agamemnon's brother," Poletes went on, his voice dropping lower, as if he did not want others to overhear. "The High King would love to smash Troy flat. That would give him clear sailing through the Hellespont into the Sea of Black Waters."
"Is that important?"
"Gold, my boy," Poletes whispered. "Not merely the metal that kings adorn themselves with, but golden grain grows by the far shores of that sea. A land awash in grain. And no one can pass through the straits to get at it unless they pay a tribute to Troy."
"Ahhh." I was beginning to see the real forces behind this war.
"Aleksandros was on a mission of peace to Mycenae, to arrange a new trade agreement between his father Priam and High King Agamemnon. He stopped off at Sparta and wound up abducting Helen instead. That was all the excuse Agamemnon needed. If he can conquer Troy he can have free access to the riches of the regions beyond the straits."
I was about to ask why the Trojans would not simply return Helen to her rightful husband, when a series of bugle blasts ended the quiet on the plain below us.
"Now it begins," Poletes said, grimly. "The fools rush to the slaughter once again."
We watched as the charioteers cracked their whips and the horses bolted forward, carrying Achaians and Trojans madly toward each other.
I focused my vision on the chariot nearest us and saw the warrior in it setting his sandaled feet in a pair of raised sockets, to give him a firm base for using his spears. He held his body-length shield before him and plucked one of the lighter, shorter spears from the handful rattling in their holder on his right.
"Diomedes," said Poletes, before I asked. "The prince of Argos. A fine young man."
The chariot approaching his swerved suddenly and the warrior in it hurled a spear. It sailed past harmlessly.
Diomedes threw his spear and hit the rump of the farthest of his opponent's four horses. The horse whickered and reared, throwing the other three so off stride that the chariot skewed wildly, tumbling the warrior onto the dusty ground. The charioteer either fell or ducked behind the chariot's siding.
Other combats were turning the worn-bare field into a vast cloud of dust, chariots wheeling, spears hurtling through the air, shrill battle cries and shouted curses ringing everywhere. The foot soldiers seemed to be holding back, letting the noblemen fight their single encounters for the first few moments of the battle.
One voice pierced all the other noises, a weird screaming cry like a seagull gone mad.
"The battle cry of Odysseus," Poletes said. "You can always hear the King of Ithaca above all others."
But I was still concentrating on Diomedes. His charioteer reined in his team and the warrior hopped down to the ground, two spears gripped in his left hand, his massive figure-eight shield bumping against his helmet and greaves.
"Ah, a lesser man would have speared his foe from the chariot," Poletes said admiringly. "Diomedes is a true nobleman. Would that he had been in Argos when Clytemnestra's men put me out!"
Diomedes approached the fallen warrior, who clambered back to his feet and held his shield before him, drawing his long sword from its scabbard. The prince of Argos took his longest and heaviest spear in his right hand and shook it menacingly. I could not hear what the two men were saying to each other, but they shouted something back and forth.
Suddenly both men dropped their weapons, rushed to each other, and embraced like a couple of long-lost brothers. I was stunned.
"They must have relatives in common," Poletes explained. "Or one of them might have been a guest in the other's household sometime in the past."
"But the battle..."
He shook his gray head. "What has that to do with it? There are plenty of others to kill."
The two warriors exchanged swords, then they both got back onto their chariots and drove in opposite directions.
"No wonder this war has lasted ten years," I muttered.
But although Diomedes and his first encounter of the day ended nonviolently, that was the only bit of peace I saw amid the carnage of the battle. Chariots hurtled at each other, spearmen driving their fourteen-foot weapons into their enemies like medieval knights would use their lances nearly two thousand years later. The bronze spear points were themselves the length of a man's arm. When all the energy generated by a team of four galloping horses was focused on the gleaming tip of that sharp spear point, it was if a high-velocity cannon shell tore into its target. Armored men were lifted off their feet, out of their chariots, when those spears found them. Bronze armor was no protection against that tremendous force.
The warriors preferred to fight from the chariots, I saw, although here and there men had alighted and faced their opponents afoot. Still the infantry soldiers hung back, skulking and squinting in the swirling clouds of dust, while the noblemen faced each other singly. Were they waiting for a signal? Was there some tactic in this bewildering melee of individual combats? Or was it that the foot soldiers knew that they could never face an armored nobleman and those deadly spears?
Here two chariots clashed together, the spearman of one driving his point through the head of the other's charioteer. There a pair of armored noblemen faced each other on foot, dueling and parrying with their long spears. One of them whirled suddenly and rammed the butt of his spear into the side of his opponent's helmet. The man dropped to the ground and his enemy drove his spear through his unprotected neck. Blood gushed onto the thirsty ground.
Instead of getting back into his chariot, or stalking another enemy, the victorious warrior dropped to his knees and began unbuckling the slain man's armor.
"A rich prize," Poletes explained. "The sword alone should buy food and wine for a month, at least."
Now the foot soldiers came forward, on both sides, some to help strip the carcass, others to defend it. A comical tug-of-war started briefly, but quickly turned into a serious fight with knives, axes, cudgels, and hatchets. The armored nobleman made all the difference, though. He cut through the enemy foot soldiers with his long sword, hacking limbs and lives until the few who could ran for their lives. Then his men resumed stripping the corpse while the warrior stood guard over them, as effectively out of the battle for the time being as if he himself had been killed.
Most of the chariots were overturned or empty of their warriors by now. Men were fighting on foot with long spears or swords. I saw armored noblemen pick up stones and throw them, to good effect. Archers—many of them charioteers who fired from the protection of their cars' leather-covered side paneling—began picking off unprotected infantry. I saw an armored warrior suddenly drop his spear and paw, howling, at an arrow sticking in his beefy shoulder. A chariot raced by and the warrior in it spitted an archer on his spear, lifting him completely out of his chariot and dragging him in the dust until his dead body wrenched free of the spear's barbed point.
All this took only a few minutes. There seemed to be no order to the battle, no plan, no tactics. The noble contestants seemed more interested in looting the bodies of the slain than defeating the enemy forces. It was more like a game than a war. A game that soaked the ground with blood and filled the air with screams of pain and terror.
The one thing that stood out above all others was that to turn and attempt to flee was much more dangerous than facing the enemy and fighting. I saw a charioteer wheel his team about to get away from two chariots converging on him. Someone threw a spear that caught him between the shoulder blades. His team ran wild, and while the warrior in the chariot attempted to take the reins from the dead hands of his companion and get the horses under control, another spearman drove up and killed him with a thrust in the back.
Foot soldiers who turned away from the fighting took arrows in the back or were cut down by chariot-mounted warriors who swung their swords like scythes.
It was getting difficult to see, the dust was swirling so thickly. But I heard a fresh trumpet blast and the roar of many men shouting in unison. Then the thunder of horses' hooves shook the ground.
Through the dust came three dozen chariots, heading straight toward the place where we stood atop the earthworks rampart.
"Prince Hector!" said Poletes, with awe in his voice. "Look how he slices through the Achaians."
Hector had either regrouped his main chariot force or had held them back from the opening melee of the battle. Whichever, he was now driving them like shock troops through the Achaian forces, slaughtering left and right. Hector's massive long spear was stained with blood halfway up its fourteen-foot length. He carried it as lightly as a wand, spitting armored noblemen and leather-jerkined foot soldiers alike, driving relentlessly toward the rampart that protected the beach, the camp, and the ships.
For a few minutes the Achaians fought back, but when Hector's chariot broke past the ragged line of Greek chariots and headed for the gate in the rampart, the Achaian resistance crumbled. Noblemen and foot soldiers alike, chariots and infantry, they all ran screaming for the safety of the earthworks.
Hector and his Trojan chariots wreaked bloody havoc among the panicked Achaians. With spears and swords and arrows they killed and killed and killed. Men ran hobbling, limping, bleeding toward us. Screams and groans filled the air.
An Achaian chariot rushed bumping and rattling to the gate, riding past and even over the fleeing footmen. I recognized the splendid armor of the squat, broad-shouldered warrior in it: Agamemnon the High King.
He did not look so splendid now. His plumed helmet was gone. His armor was coated with dust. An arrow protruded from his right shoulder and blood streaked the arm.
"We're doomed!" he shrieked in a high girlish voice. "Doomed!"
THE Achaians were racing for the safety of the rampart, with the Trojan chariots in hot pursuit, closely followed by the Trojan infantry brandishing swords and axes. Here and there a foot soldier would stop for a moment to sling a stone at the retreating Achaians or drop to one knee to fire an arrow.
An arrow whizzed past me. I turned and saw that Poletes and I were alone on the crest of the rampart. The other thetes, even the whipmaster, had gone down into the camp.
A noisy struggle was taking place at the gate. It was a ramshackle wooden affair, made of planks taken from some of the ships. It was not a hinged door but simply a wooden barricade that could be lifted and wedged into the opening in the earthworks.
Some men were frantically trying to put the gate in place, while others were trying to hold them back until the remainder of the fleeing Achaians could get through. I saw that Hector and his chariots would reach the gate in another minute or less. Once past that gate, I knew, the Trojans would slaughter everyone in the camp.
"Stay here," I said to Poletes. Without looking to see if he obeyed, I dodged among the stakes planted in the rampart's crest, heading toward the gate.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a light spear hurtling toward me. My senses seemed to be heightened, sharpened. The world around me went into slow-motion as my body surged into hyperdrive. The javelin came floating lazily through the air, flexing slightly as it flew. I skipped back a step and it struck the ground at my feet, quivering. I yanked it loose and raced toward the gate.
Hector's chariot was already pounding up the sandy ramp that cut across the trench in front of the rampart. There was no time for anything else, so I leaped from the rampart's crest onto the ramp, right in front of Hector's charging horses. I yelled and threw up both arms, and the startled horses reared up, neighing.
For an instant the world stopped, frozen as in a painting on a vase. Behind me the Achaians were struggling to put up the barricade that would hold the Trojans out of the camp. Before me Hector's team of horses reared high, the unshod hooves of their forelegs flashing inches from my face. I stood crouched slightly, holding the light javelin in both my hands at chest level, ready to move in any direction.
The horses shied away from me, their eyes bulging white with fear, twisting the chariot almost sideways along the pounded-earth ramp. I saw the warrior in the chariot still standing, one hand on the rail, the other raised over his head, holding a monstrously long blood-soaked spear.
Aimed at my chest.
I looked into the eyes of Hector, prince of Troy. Brown eyes they were, calm and deep. No anger, no battle lust. He was a cool and calculating warrior, a thinker among hordes of adrenaline-soaked brutes. I noticed that he wore a small round shield buckled to his left arm instead of the massive body-length type most of the other nobles carried. On it was painted a flying heron, almost in a style that would be called Japanese in millennia to come.
He jabbed the spear at me. I sidestepped and, dropping the javelin I had been carrying, grabbed the hefty ash wood shaft and pulled Hector clear over the railing of his chariot. Wrenching the spear from his one-handed grasp, I swung it against the charioteer's head, knocking him over the other side of the car.
The horses panicked and stumbled over each other in the narrow passage of the ramp. One of them started sliding along the steep edge of the trench. Whinnying with fear, they backed away and turned, trampling the poor charioteer as they bolted off back down the ramp and toward the distant city, dragging the empty chariot with them.
Hector scrambled to his feet and came at me with his sword. I parried with the spear, holding it like an elongated quarterstaff, and knocked his feet out from under him again.
By this time more Trojans were rushing up the ramp on foot, their chariots useless because Hector's panicked team had scattered the others.
I glanced behind me. The barricade was up now, and Achaian archers were firing through the slits between its planks. Others were atop the rampart, hurling stones and spears. Hector held his shield up to protect himself against the missiles and backed away. A few Trojan arrows came my way, but I avoided them easily.
The Trojans retreated, but only beyond the distance of a bowshot. There Hector told them to stand their ground.
And just like that the morning's battle was ended. The Achaians were penned up in their camp, behind the trench and rampart, the sea at their backs. The Trojans held the corpse-strewn plain.
I clambered up the barricade and threw a leg over its top. Hesitating for a second, I glanced back at the battlefield. How many of those youthful lords who had come on our boat were now lying out there, stripped of their splendid armor, their jeweled swords, their young lives? I saw birds circling high above in the clean blue sky. Not gulls: vultures.
Poletes called to me. "Orion, you must be a son of Ares! A mighty warrior to best Prince Hector!"
Other voices joined the praise as I let myself over the rickety barricade and dropped lightly to the ground. They surrounded me, clapping my back and shoulders, smiling, shouting. Someone offered me a wooden cup of wine.
"You saved the camp!"
"You stopped those horses as if you were Poseidon himself!"
Even the whipmaster looked on me fondly. "That was not the action of a thes," he said, looking me over carefully, perhaps for the first time, out of his bulging frog's eyes. "Why is a warrior working as a paid man?"
Without even thinking about it, I replied, "A duty I must perform. A duty to a god."
They edged away from me. Their smiles turned to awe. Only the whipmaster had the courage to stand his ground before me. He nodded and said quietly, "I understand. Well, the god must be pleased with you this morning."
I shrugged. "We'll know soon enough."
Poletes came to my side. "Come, I'll find you a good fire and hot food."
I let the old storyteller lead me away.
"I knew you were no ordinary man," he said as we made our way through the scattered huts and tents. "Not someone with your shoulders. Why, you're almost as tall as Great Ajax. A nobleman, I told myself. A nobleman, at the very least."
He chattered and yammered, telling me how my deeds looked to his eyes, reciting the day's carnage as if he were trying to set it firmly in his memory for future recall. Every group of men we passed offered us a share of their midday meal. The women in the camp smiled at me. Some were bold enough to come up to us and offer me freshly cooked meats and onions on skewers.
Poletes shooed them all away. "Tend to your masters' hungers," he snapped. "Bind their wounds and pour healing ointments over them. Feed them and give them wine and bat your cow-eyes at them."
To me he said, "Women cause all the trouble in the world, Orion. Be careful of them."
"Are these women slaves or thetes?" I asked.
"There are no women thetes. It's unheard of. A woman, working for wages? Unheard of!"
"Not even prostitutes?"
"Ah! In the cities, yes, of course. Temple prostitutes. But they are not thetes. It's not the same thing at all."
"Then the women here..."
"Slaves. Captives. Daughters and wives of slain enemies, captured in the sack of towns and farms."
We came to a group of men sitting around one of the larger cook fires, down close beside the black-tarred boats. They looked up and made room for us. Up on the boat nearest us a large canvas had been draped to form a tent. A helmeted guard stood before it, with a well-groomed dog by his side. I stared at the carved and painted figurehead of the boat, a grinning dolphin's face against a deep blue background.
"Odysseus's camp," Poletes explained, in a low voice, as we sat and were offered generous bowls of roasted meat and goblets of honeyed wine. "These are Ithacans."
He poured a few drops of wine on the ground before drinking, and made me do the same. "Reverence the gods," Poletes instructed me, surprised that I did not know the custom.
The men praised me for my performance at the barricade, then fell to wondering which particular god had inspired me to such heroic action. The favorites were Poseidon and Ares, although Athene was a close runner and Zeus himself was mentioned now and then. Being Greeks, they soon fell to arguing passionately among themselves without bothering to ask me about it.
I was happy to let them speculate. I listened, and as they argued I learned much about the war.
They had not been camped here at Troy for ten years, although they had been campaigning in the region each summer for nearly that long. Achilles, Menalaos, Agamemnon, and the other warrior kings had been ravaging the eastern Aegean coast, burning towns and taking captives, until finally they had worked up the nerve—and the forces—to besiege Troy itself.
But without Achilles, their fiercest fighter, the men thought that their prospects were dim. Apparently Agamemnon had awarded Achilles a young woman captive and then taken her back for himself, and this insult was more than the haughty warrior could endure, even from the High King.
"The joke of it all," said one of the men, tossing a well-gnawed lamb bone to the dogs hovering beyond our circle, "is that Achilles prefers his friend Patrokles to any woman."
They all nodded and murmured agreement. The strain between Achilles and Agamemnon was not over a sexual partner; it was a matter of honor and stubborn pride. On both sides, as far as I could see.
As we ate and talked the skies darkened and thunder rumbled from inland.
"Father Zeus speaks from Mt. Ida," said Poletes.
One of the foot soldiers, his leather jerkin stained with spatters of grease and blood, grinned up at the cloudy sky. "Maybe Zeus will give us the afternoon off."
"Can't fight in the rain," someone else agreed.
Sure enough, within minutes it began pelting down. We scattered for whatever shelter we could find. Poletes and I hunkered down in the lee of Odysseus's boat.
"Now the great lords will meet and arrange a truce, so that the women and slaves can go out and recover the bodies of the dead. Tonight their bodies will be burned and a barrow raised over their bones." He sighed. "That's how the rampart began, as a barrow to cover the remains of the slain heroes."
I sat and watched the rain pouring down, turning the beach into a quagmire, dotting the sea with splashes. The gusting wind drove gray sheets of rain across the bay, and it got so dark and misty that I could not see the headland. It was chill and miserable and there was nothing to do except wait like dumb animals until the sun returned.
I crouched as close to the boat's hull as I could, feeling cold and utterly alone. I knew I did not belong in this time and place. I had been exiled here by the same power that had killed my love.
I serve a god, I had told these gullible Achaians. Yes, but not willingly. Like a poor witless creature blundering through a fathomless forest, I am reacting to forces beyond my comprehension.
Who did inspire my heroics? I wondered. The golden figure in my dream called himself Apollo. But from what the men around the campfire had said, Apollo supported the Trojans in this war, not the Achaians. I found myself dreading sleep. I knew that once I fell asleep I would again have to face that... god. I had no other word for him.
Suddenly I realized a man was standing in front of me. I looked up and saw a sturdy, thick-torsoed man with a grizzled dark beard and a surly look on his face. He wore a wolf's skin draped over his head and shoulders. The rain pounded on it. Knee-length tunic, with a sword buckled to his hip. Shins and calves muddied. Ham-sized fists planted on his hips.
"You're the one called Orion?" he shouted over the driving rain.
I scrambled to my feet and saw that I stood several inches taller than he. Still, he did not look like a man to be taken lightly.
"I am Orion."
"Come with me," he snapped, and started to turn away.
"To where?"
Over his shoulder he answered, "My lord Odysseus wants to see what kind of man could stop Prince Hector in his tracks. Now move!"
Poletes came with me around the prow of the boat, through the soaking rain, and up a rope ladder to its deck.
"I knew Odysseus was the only one here wise enough to make use of you," he cackled. "I knew it!"
WHICH god do you serve?" Odysseus asked. I stood in the presence of the King of Ithaca, who was sitting on a wooden stool, flanked on either side by other noblemen. He did not appear to be a very tall man; his legs seemed stumpy, but heavily muscled. His chest was enormous, broad and deep like that of a man who had swum every day since boyhood. Thick strong arms, circled by leather wristbands and a bronze armlet above his left elbow that gleamed with polished onyx and lapis lazuli even in the gloom inside his shipboard tent. White scars from old wounds stood out against the dark skin of his arms, parting the black hairs like roads through a forest.
There was a fresh gash on his right forearm, as well, red and still oozing blood slightly.
The rain drummed against the canvas, scant inches above my head. The tent smelled of dogs, musty and damp. And cold. Odysseus wore a sleeveless tunic, his legs and feet bare, but he had a sheep's fleece thrown across his wide shoulders.
His face was thickly bearded with dark curly hair. Only a trace of gray in that beard. His heavy mop of ringlets came down to his shoulders and across his forehead almost down to his black eyebrows. Those eyes were as gray as the sea outside on this rainy afternoon, probing, searching, judging.
He had asked his question the instant Poletes and I were ushered into his tent, without any preliminaries or formal greetings.
"Which god do you serve?"
Hastily I replied, "Athene." I was not sure why I picked the warrior goddess, except that Poletes had said she favored the Achaians against the Trojans.
Odysseus grunted and motioned for me to sit on the only unoccupied stool in the tent. The two other men sitting on either side of him were dressed much as he was. One of them seemed about Odysseus's age, the other much older: His hair and beard were entirely white and his limbs seemed withered to bones and tendons. He had wrapped a blue cloak around himself. They all looked weary and drained by the morning's battle even though neither of them bore fresh wounds as Odysseus did.
Odysseus seemed to notice Poletes for the first time. "Who is he?" he asked, pointing.
"My friend," I said. "My companion and helper."
He nodded, accepting the storyteller. Behind Poletes, barely inside the tent and out of the pelting rain, stood the officer who had summoned us to this audience with the King of Ithaca.
"You did us a great service this morning," said Odysseus. "Such service should be rewarded."
The frail old man at Odysseus's right spoke up in a surprisingly deep, strong voice. "We are told that you arrived as a thes aboard the boat that came in last night. Yet you fought this morning like a warrior born and bred. By the gods! You reminded me of myself when I was your age. I was absolutely fearless then! As far away as Mycenae and even Thebes I was known! Let me tell you..."
Odysseus raised his right hand. "Please, Nestor, I pray you forego your reminiscences for the moment."
The old man looked displeased, but sank back in silence.
"What reward would you ask?" Odysseus said to me. "If it is in my power I will gladly grant it."
I thought for half a moment only, then replied, "I ask to be made a warrior in the service of the King of Ithaca." Then, sensing a slight shuffling of bare feet behind me, I added, "And to have my friend here as my servant."
For several seconds Odysseus said nothing, although Nestor bobbed his white-bearded head vigorously and the younger warrior on the king's left smiled at me.
"You are both thetes, without a household?" Odysseus asked.
"Yes."
He stroked his beard. Then a slow smile spread across his face. "Then welcome to the household of the King of Ithaca. Your wish is granted."
I was not certain of what I should do, until I saw Nestor frown slightly and prompt me by motioning with both hands, palms down. I knelt before Odysseus.
"Thank you, great king," I said, hoping it was the right degree of humility. "I shall serve you to the best of my abilities."
Odysseus took the armlet from his biceps and clasped it on my arm. "Rise, Orion. Your courage and strength will be a welcome addition to our forces." To the officer at the tent's entrance he commanded, "Antilokos, see that he gets some decent clothing—and weapons."
Then he nodded a dismissal at me. I turned. Poletes was beaming at me. Antilokos, his wolfskin cape still dripping, looked at me as if measuring me, not for clothing, but as a fighter.
As we left the tent and went back into the pouring rain, I could hear King Nestor's vibrant voice. "Very crafty of you, Odysseus! By bringing him into your household you gain the favor of Athene, whom he serves. I couldn't have made a wiser move myself, although in my years I've made some very delicate decisions, let me tell you. Why, I remember the time when Dardanian pirates were raiding the coast of my kingdom and nobody seemed to be able to stop them, since King Minos's fleet had been destroyed in the great tidal wave. Well then, the pirates captured a merchant ship bearing a load of copper from Kypros. Worth a fortune it was, because you know that you can't make bronze without copper. No one knew what to do! The copper was..."
His voice, strong as it was, was finally drowned out by the heavy rain and moaning wind.
Antilokos led us past several Ithacan boats to a lean-to made of logs lashed together and then daubed with the same black pitch that caulked the boats. It was the largest structure I had seen in the camp, big enough to hold a couple of dozen men, I estimated. There was only one doorway, a low one with a sheet of canvas tacked over it to keep out the rain and wind.
Inside, the shed was a combination of warehouse and armory that made Poletes whistle with astonishment. Chariots were stored there, tilted up with their yoke poles pointing into the air. Stacks of helmets and armor were neatly piled along one wall, while racks of spears, swords, and bows lined the other, with chests full of clothes and blankets along the back wall between them.
"So much!" Poletes gasped.
Antilokos, who was not a man given to humor, made a grim smile. "Spoils from the slain."
Poletes nodded and whispered, "So many."
A wizened old man stepped across the sand floor from his hideaway behind a table piled with clay tablets.
"What now? Haven't I enough to do without you dragging in strangers?" he whined. He was a lean and sour-faced old grump, his hands gnarled and twisted into claws, his back stooped.
"A new one for you, scribe. My lord Odysseus wants him outfitted properly." And with that, Antilokos turned and ducked through the shed's low doorway.
The scribe shuffled over close enough almost to touch me and peered up at me with squinted eyes. "Big as a Cretan bull! How does he expect me to find proper clothing for someone your size?"
He grumbled and muttered as he led Poletes and me past tables laden with bronze cuirasses, arm protectors, greaves, and plumed helmets. I stopped and reached for a helmet.
"Not that!" the scribe screeched. "Those are not for the likes of you!"
He sank one of those clawlike hands into my forearm and tugged me to a pile of clothes on the ground, close by the entrance to the shed.
"Here," he said. "See what you can find among those."
It took a while, but I eventually dressed myself in a stained linen tunic, a leather skirt that reached my knees, and a sleeveless leather jerkin that did not feel so tight across the shoulders that it would hamper my movements. While the scribe scowled and grumbled, I made certain that Poletes found a tunic and a wool shirt. For weapons I took a plain short sword and strapped a dagger to my right thigh, beneath the skirt. Neither one of them had precious metals or jewels in their hilts, although the sword's crosspiece bore an intricate design engraved in its bronze.
The scribe could not find any kind of helmet that would fit me, so we finally settled on a hooded mantle of bronze chain mail. Sandals and bronze-studded leather greaves completed my array, although my toes hung out over the edges of the sandals noticeably.
The scribe resisted fiercely, but I insisted on taking two blankets apiece. He screeched and argued and threatened that he would call the king himself to tell what a spendthrift I was. It was not until I lifted him off his feet with a one-fisted grab at his tunic that he shut up and let me take the blankets. But his scowl would have curdled milk.
By the time we left the shed the rain had stopped and the westering sun was rapidly drying off the beach. Poletes led the way back to the fire and the men with whom we had shared our midday meal. We ate again, drank wine, and laid out our newly acquired blankets in preparation for sleeping.
Then Poletes fell to his bony knees and grasped my right hand in both of his, tightly, with a strength I would not have guessed was in him.
"Orion, my master, you have saved my life two times this day."
I wanted to pull my hand loose.
"You have saved the whole camp from Hector's spear and his vengeful Trojans, but in addition you have lifted me out of a life of misery and shame. I will serve you always, Orion. I will always be grateful to you for showing such mercy to a poor old storyteller."
He kissed my hand.
I reached down and lifted him by his frail shoulders to his feet.
"Poor old windbag," I said lightly, "you're the first man I've ever seen grateful to become a slave."
"Your slave, Orion," he corrected. "I am happy to be that."
I shook my head, uncertain of what to do or say. Finally I groused, "Well, get some sleep."
"Yes. Certainly. May Phantasos send you happy dreams."
I did not want to close my eyes. I did not want to dream of the Creator who called himself Apollo—if my encounter with him could be called a dream.
I lay on my back staring at the star-studded blackness, wondering which star our ship had been traveling to, and whether the light of its explosion would ever be seen in Earth's night skies. I saw her face again, lovely beyond belief, dark hair gleaming in the starlight, gray eyes sparkling with desire.
He had killed her, I knew. The Golden One. Apollo. Killed her and blamed it on me. Killed her and exiled me to this primitive time. Killed her, but saved me for his own amusement.
"Orion?" a voice whispered.
I sat up and automatically put out a hand for the sword resting on the ground beside me.
"The king wants you." It was Antilokos kneeling beside me.
I scrambled to my feet, gripping the sword. It was black night, with just enough light from the dying fire for me to recognize the man's face.
"Better bring your helmet, if you have one," Antilokos said.
I reached down and took my chain-mail mantle. Poletes's eyes opened.
"The king wants to speak to me," I told the old man. "Go back to sleep."
He smiled and snuggled happily into his blankets.
I followed Antilokos past the sleeping bodies of our comrades to the prow of Odysseus's boat.
As I had suspected, the king was much shorter than I. The plume of his helmet barely reached my chin. He nodded a greeting to me and said simply, "Follow me, Orion."
The three of us walked silently through the sleeping camp and up to the crest of the rampart, not far from the gate where I had gained their respect earlier that day. Soldiers stood on guard up there, gripping long spears and eyeing the darkness nervously. Beyond the inky shadow of the trench the plain was dotted with Trojan campfires.
Odysseus gave a sigh that seemed to wrench his mighty chest. "Prince Hector holds the plain, as you can see. Tomorrow his forces will storm the rampart and try to break into our camp and burn our ships."
"Can we hold them?" I asked.
"The gods will decide, once the sun comes up."
I said nothing. I suspected that Odysseus was trying to come up with a plan that might influence the gods his way.
A strong tenor voice called from the darkness below us. "Odysseus, son of Laertes, are you counting the Trojan campfires?"
Odysseus smiled grimly. "No, Big Ajax. They are too many for any man to count."
He motioned to me and we went back down into the camp. Ajax was indeed something of a giant among these men: He towered over them and even topped me by an inch or two. He was big across the shoulders, as well, and his arms were as thick as young tree trunks. He stood bareheaded under the stars, dressed only in a tunic and leather vest. His face was broad, with high cheekbones and a little pug of a nose. His beard was thin, new-looking, not like the thick curly growth of Odysseus and the other chieftains. With a bit of a shock, I realized that Big Ajax was very young, probably no more than nineteen or twenty.
A much older man stood beside him, hair and beard white, wrapped in a dark cloak.
"I brought Phoenix along," said Big Ajax. "Maybe he can appeal to Achilles better than we can."
Odysseus nodded his approval.
"I was his tutor when Achilles was a lad," said Phoenix in a slightly quavering voice. "He was proud and touchy even then."
Ajax shrugged his massive shoulders. Odysseus said, "Well, let us try to convince Achilles to rejoin the army."
We started off for the far end of the camp, where Achilles's boats were beached. Half a dozen armed men trailed behind the three nobles, and I fell in with them.
The wind was blowing in off the water, cold and sharp as a knife. I almost envied Poletes the blankets he had wrapped around himself, and began to wonder why I had not taken cloaks for the two of us from the tight-fisted old scribe.
Once we entered Achilles's portion of the camp, we passed several sentries on duty, fully armed and armored, with helmets strapped on tightly and spears in their hands. They wore cloaks, which the wind plucked at and whipped around their suits of bronze armor. They recognized the giant Ajax and the squat but powerful King of Ithaca, of course, and let the rest of us pass unchallenged.
Finally we were stopped by a pair of guards whose armor glittered even in the faint starlight, within a few yards of a large cabin, built of planks.
"We are a deputation from the High King," said Odysseus, his voice deep and grave with formality, "sent to see Achilles, prince of the Myrmidones."
The guard saluted by clasping his fist to his heart and said, "Prince Achilles has been expecting you and bids you welcome."
He stepped aside and gestured us to the door of the cabin.
MIGHTY warrior though he was, Achilles apparently enjoyed his creature comforts. The cabin's interior was draped with rich tapestries, and the floor was covered with more carpets. Couches and pillows were scattered across the spacious room. In one corner a hearth fire smoldered red, keeping out the cold and damp. I could hear the wind moaning through the hole in the roof, but inside it was reasonably snug and warm.
Three women sat by the fire staring at us with great dark eyes. They were slim and young, dressed modestly in sleeveless gray chemises. Iron and copper pots stood on tripods at the hearth, faint wisps of steam issuing from them. I smelled spiced meat and garlic.
Achilles himself sat on a wide couch against the far wall of the cabin, his back to a magnificent arras that depicted a gory battle scene. The couch was up on a dais, raised above the floor of the cabin like a king's throne.
My first sight of the great warrior was a surprise. He was not a mighty-thewed giant, as Ajax. His body was not broad and powerful, as Odysseus's. He seemed small, almost boyish, his bare arms and legs slim and virtually hairless. His chin was shaved clean and the ringlets of his long black hair were tied up in a silver chain. He wore a splendid white silk tunic, bordered with a purple key design, cinched at the waist with a belt of interlocking gold crescents.
He wore no weapons, but behind him a half-dozen long spears rested against the arras, within easy reach.
His face was the greatest shock. Ugly, almost to the point of being grotesque. Narrow beady eyes, lips curled in a perpetual snarl, a sharp hook of a nose, skin pocked and cratered. In his right hand he gripped a jeweled wine cup; it seemed to me that he had already drained it more than once.
At his feet sat a young man who was absolutely beautiful, gazing not at us but up at Achilles. It was Patrokles, I knew without being told. His tightly curled hair was reddish brown, rather than the usual darker tones of the Greeks. I wondered if it was his natural color. Like Achilles, Patrokles was beardless. But he seemed young enough not to need to shave. A golden pitcher of wine stood on the carpet beside him.
I looked at Achilles again and understood the demons that drove him to be the greatest warrior of his age. A small ugly boy born to a king. A boy destined to rule, but always the object of taunts and derisive laughter behind his back. A young man possessed with fire to silence the laughter, to stifle the taunting. His slim arms and legs were iron-hard, knotted with muscle. His eyes were absolutely humorless. There was no doubt in my mind that he could outfight Odysseus or even powerful Ajax on sheer willpower alone.
"Greetings, Odysseus the Ever-Daring," he said, in a calm, clear tenor voice that was close to mocking. "And to you, mighty Ajax, King of Salamis and champion of the Achaian host." Then his voice softened. "And to you, Phoenix, my well-loved tutor."
I glanced at the old man. He bowed toward Achilles, but his eyes were on the beautiful Patrokles.
"We bring you greetings, Prince Achilles," said Odysseus, "from Agamemnon the High King."
"The bargain-breaker, you mean," Achilles snapped. "Agamemnon the gift-snatcher."
"He is our High King," Odysseus said, his tone barely suggesting that they were all stuck with Agamemnon and the best they could do was try to work with him.
"So he is," admitted Achilles. "And well beloved by Father Zeus, I'm sure."
It was going to be a difficult parley, I could see.
"Perhaps our guests are hungry," Patrokles suggested in a soft voice.
Achilles tousled his curly mop of hair. "Always the thoughtful one."
He bade us sit and told the serving women to feed us and bring wine cups. Odysseus, Ajax, and Phoenix took couches arranged near Achilles's dais. Patrokles filled their cups from his pitcher of gold. We underlings sat on the floor, by the entrance. The women passed trays of broiled lamb with onions among us and filled our wooden cups with spiced wine mixed with honey.
After a round of toasts and polite banter, Achilles said, "I thought I heard the mighty Agamemnon bawling like a woman, earlier today. He breaks into tears quite easily, doesn't he?"
Odysseus frowned slightly. "Our High King was wounded today. A cowardly Trojan archer hit him in the right shoulder."
"Too bad," said Achilles. "I see that you did not escape the day's fighting without a wound, yourself. Did it bring you to tears?"
Ajax burst out, "Achilles, if Agamemnon cries, it's not from pain or fright. It's from shame! Shame that the Trojans have penned us up in our camp. Shame that our best fighter sits here on a soft couch while his comrades are being slaughtered by Hector and his troops."
"Shame is what he should feel!" Achilles shouted back. "He's robbed me! He's treated me like a slave or even worse. He calls himself the High King but he behaves like a thieving whoremaster!"
And so it went, for hours. Achilles was furious with Agamemnon for taking back a prize he had been awarded, some captive girl. He claimed that he did all the fighting while Agamemnon was a coward, but after the battle was won the High King parceled out the spoils to suit himself and even then reneged on what Achilles felt was due him.
"I have sacked more towns and brought the Achaians more captives and loot than any man here, and none of you can say I haven't," he insisted hotly. "Yet that fat lard-ass can steal my proper rewards away from me and you—all of you!—just let him do it. Did any of you stick up for me in the council? Do you think I owe you anything? Why should I fight for you when you won't even raise your voices on my behalf?"
Patrokles tried to soothe him, without much success. "Achilles, these men aren't your enemies. They've come here on a mission of reconciliation. It isn't proper for a host to bellow at his guests so."
"I know," Achilles replied, almost smiling down at the young man. "It's not your fault," he said to Odysseus and the others. "But I'll see myself in Hades before I'll help Agamemnon again. He's not trustworthy. You should be thinking about appointing a new leader for yourselves."
Odysseus tried tact, praising Achilles's prowess in battle, downplaying Agamemnon's failures and shortcomings. Ajax, as blunt and straightforward as a shovel, flatly told Achilles that he was helping the Trojans to murder the Achaians. Old Phoenix appealed to his former student's sense of honor, and recited childhood homilies at him.
Achilles remained unmoved. "Honor?" he snapped at Phoenix. "What kind of honor would I have left if I put my spear back in the service of the man who robbed me?"
Odysseus said, "We can get the girl back for you, if that's what you want. We can get a dozen girls for you."
"Or boys," Ajax added. "Whatever you want."
Achilles got to his feet, and Patrokles scrambled to stand beside him. I was right, he was terribly small, although every inch of him was hard with sinew. Even the slender Patrokles topped him by a few inches.
"I will defend my boats when Hector breaks into the camp," Achilles said. "Until Agamemnon comes to me personally and apologizes, and begs me to rejoin the fighting, that is all that I will do."
Odysseus rose, realizing that we were being dismissed. Phoenix stood up and, after glancing around, Ajax finally understood and got up too.
"What will the poets say of Achilles in future generations?" Odysseus asked, firing his last arrow at the warrior's pride. "That he sulked in his tent while the Trojans slaughtered his friends?"
The shot glanced off Achilles without penetrating. "They will never say that I humbled myself and threw away my honor by serving a man who has humiliated me."
We went to the doorway, speaking polite formal farewells. Phoenix hung back and I heard Achilles invite his old mentor to remain the night.
Outside, Ajax shook his head wearily. "There's nothing we can do. He just won't listen to us."
Odysseus clapped his broad shoulder. "We tried our best, my friend. Now we must prepare for tomorrow's battle without Achilles."
Ajax trudged off into the darkness, followed by his men. Odysseus turned to me, a thoughtful look on his face.
"I have a task for you to perform," he said. "If you are successful you can end the war."
"And if I am not?"
Odysseus smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. "No man lives forever, Orion."
IN less than an hour I found myself picking my way across the trench that fronted our rampart and heading into the Trojan camp. A white cloth knotted above my left elbow proclaimed that I was operating under a flag of truce. The slim willow wand in my right hand was the impromptu symbol of a herald.
"These should get you past the Trojan sentries without having your throat slit," Odysseus had told me. He did not smile as he said those words, and I did not find his reassurances very reassuring.
"Get to Prince Hector and speak to no one else," he had commanded me. "Tell him that Agamemnon offers a solution to this war: If the Trojans will return Helen to her rightful husband, the Achaians will return to their own lands, satisfied."
"Hasn't that offer been made before?" I asked.
Odysseus smiled at my naiveté. "Of course. But always with the demand for a huge ransom, plus all the fortune that Helen brought with her. And always when we were fighting under the walls of Troy. Priam and his sons never believed we would abandon the siege without breaking in and sacking the city. But now that Hector is besieging us, perhaps they will believe that we are ready to quit, and merely need a face-saving compromise to send us packing."
"Returning Helen is nothing more than a face-saving compromise?" I blurted.
He looked at me curiously. "She is only a woman, Orion. Do you think Menalaos has been pining away in celibacy since the bitch ran off with Aleksandros?"
I blinked at him, so taken aback by his attitude that I had no reply. I wondered, though, if Odysseus felt the same way about his own wife, waiting for him back in Ithaca.
He made me repeat my instructions and then, satisfied, led me to the top of the rampart, not far from where I had gained my moment of glory earlier in the day. I gazed out into the darkness. In the silvery moonlight a mist had risen, turning the plain into a ghostly shivering vapor that rose and sank slowly like the breath of some living thing. Here and there I could make out the glow of Trojan campfires, like distant faint stars in the shrouding fog.
"Remember," said Odysseus, "you are to speak to Prince Hector and no one else."
"I understand," I said.
I scrambled down the slope of the rampart, into the inky shadows of the trench, and finally made my way through the slowly drifting tendrils of mist toward the Trojan camp, guided by the fires that flickered and glowed through the fog. The mist was cold on my skin, like the touch of death.
Peering through the moon-silvered haze, I saw one campfire that seemed larger, brighter, than all the others. That must be where Hector's tent is, I told myself. I headed toward it, tense with the expectation of being challenged by a sentry at any moment. I hoped I would be challenged, and not merely speared out of the darkness before any questions were asked. My senses were hyper-alert; I think I could have heard a dagger being drawn from its sheath, or seen a man stalking behind me out of the back of my head. But I heard and saw nothing. It was as if the fog had enveloped the whole camp, muffled every sound, mummified every man there except me.
The fire seemed to be growing, as if someone were feeding it, turning it from a dying campfire into a great welcoming beacon. But it no longer flickered like a fire. It was a steady bright glare, growing more brilliant by the moment. Soon it was so bright that I had to throw my arm across my brow to shield my eyes from its burning intensity. I felt no heat from it, but its brilliance exerted a force of its own. I felt myself pressed by that blinding glare, forced to my knees by its overpowering golden radiance.
Then I heard a man's laughter, and knew at once who it was.
"On your feet, Orion!" said the Golden One. "Or do you enjoy crawling like a worm?"
Slowly I rose to my feet. The Golden One stood bathed in a warm glow that seemed to separate us from the mist-shrouded plain. It remained night beyond us. No one in the camp stirred. No sentries saw us or heard us.
"Orion," he said, his smile mocking, "somehow you continually find ways to displease me. You saved the Achaian camp."
"That displeases you?" I asked.
He scratched at his chin, a strangely human gesture in so godlike a person. "As Apollo, the sun god, the one who brings light and beauty to these people, I seek victory for the Trojans over these barbarians from Achaia."
"And the other..." I groped for a word, settled on, "gods? Not all of them favor Troy, do they?"
His smile withered.
"There are others," I said. "Godlike beings like yourself?"
"There are," he admitted.
"Greater than you? Is there a Zeus, a Poseidon?"
"There are several... beings such as I, Orion," he said, waving a hand vaguely. "The names that these primitive people call them are irrelevant."
"But are they more powerful than you? Is there a Zeus? A king among you?"
He laughed. "You're trying to find a way of fighting against me!"
"I'm trying to understand who and what you are," I said. Which was truth, as far as it went.
The Golden One eyed me carefully, almost warily. "Very well," he said at last, "if you want to see some of the others..."
And gradually, like a night fog slowly burning away under the morning sun, I saw images beginning to form all around me. Slowly they emerged, materialized, took on solidity and color. Living, breathing men and women surrounded me, peered down at me, inspected me as a scientist might examine some species of insect or bacterium.
"This is rash," said one of them in a deep godly voice.
"He is my creature," the Golden One retorted. "I can control him."
Yes, I thought. You can control me. But one day your control will slip.
I could see dozens of faces peering at me: beautiful women with flawless skin and eyes that glowed like jewels; men who radiated youth and yet spoke with the gravity and knowledge of millennia, eons, eternity itself.
I felt like a little boy in the midst of vastly wiser adults, like a child confronted by giants.
"I brought him here from the plain of Ilios," said the Golden One, almost as if daring them to complain.
"You grow bolder," said the one who had spoken first. He was dark of hair and eye, as solemn as a high craggy mountain. I thought of him as Zeus, even though there were no lightning bolts in his grip and his beard was neatly trimmed and barely touched with gray.
The Golden One laughed carelessly.
Around that circle of vast unsmiling faces I searched, looking for one that would be familiar, the goddess I had loved, or even the dark Ahriman whom I had hunted. I saw neither.
One of the women spoke. "You still intend to allow the Trojans to win their war?"
The Golden One smiled at her. "Yes, even though that displeases you."
"The Greeks have much to offer your creatures," she said.
"Pah! Barbarians."
"They will not always be so. In time they will build a beautiful civilization... if you let them."
With a shake of his golden mane, "The civilization of Troy will be even more beautiful, I promise you."
"I have studied the time-tracks," said one of the males. "The Greeks should be allowed to win."
"No!" shouted the Golden One. "Damn the time-tracks! I am creating a new track here, one that will please all of us, if you'd only stop interfering with my plans."
"We have as much right to manipulate these creatures as you do," said the woman. "I really have very little confidence in your plans."
"Because you don't understand," the Golden One insisted. "I want Troy to win because Troy will then become the most important nexus in this phase of human history. The city will grow into a mighty empire that spans Europe and Asia. Think of it! The energy and vigor of the Europeans combined with the wisdom and patience of the East. The wealth of both worlds will be commingled into a single, unified Ilian empire that will span from the British Isles to the Indian subcontinent!"
"What good will that do?" asked one of the other men. Like the others, he was as handsome as a human face can be, flawless in every detail. "Your creatures will still have to face the ultimate crisis. Unity among them may be less desirable than a healthy amount of competition."
"Yes," said the woman. "Remember the Neanderthal-dominated track that you sent this creature to destroy. You ended by nearly destroying all of us."
The Golden One glared down at me. "That was a mistake that will not be repeated."
"No, not with Ahriman and his tribes safely in their own continuum now."
"That is done and we survived the crisis," said the one I called Zeus. "The question at hand is what to do about the particular nexus at Troy."
"Troy must win," insisted the Golden One.
"No, the Greeks should..."
"The Trojans will win," the Golden One stated flatly. "They will win because I will make them win."
"So that you can create this Ilian empire that appears to be so dear to your heart," said Zeus.
"Exactly."
"Why is that so important?" asked the woman.
"It will unify all of Europe and much of Asia," he replied. "There will be no separation of East and West, no dichotomy of the human spirit. No Alexander of Macedon with his semibarbaric lusts, no Roman Empire, no Constantinople to act as a barrier between Asia and Europe. No Christianity and no Islam to fight their twenty-century-long war against each other."
They listened and began to nod. All but the skeptical woman and the one I called Zeus.
It is a game to them, I realized. They are manipulating human history the way a chess player moves pieces across his board. And if a civilization is utterly destroyed, it means as little to them as if a pawn or a rook is captured and removed from the board.
"Does it really make that much difference?" asked one of the dark-haired men.
"Of course it does!" the Golden One replied. "I seek to unite the human race, to bring all the many facets of my creatures into harmony and unity..."
"So that they can help us to face the ultimate crisis," said Zeus, almost in a mutter.
The Golden One nodded. "That is my goal. We need all the help we can get."
"I am not certain that your way is the best method," Zeus said.
"I'm certain it's not," said the woman.
"I'm going ahead with it whether you approve or not," the Golden One retorted. "These are my creatures and I will bring them to the point where they can be of true assistance to us."
The others in the circle murmured and nodded or shook their heads. There was no unanimity among them. As I watched, they began to fade away, to blur and dissolve until only the Golden One and I stood facing each other against the all-pervasive glow of a place that had no location, no time, in any world that I knew.
"Well, Orion, you have met the others. Some of them, at least."
"You spoke of us as your creatures," I said. "Do the others have creatures of their own, as well?"
"Some do. Others seem more interested in meddling with my creatures than in creating their own."
"Then... the men and women of Earth—you created them?"
"You were one of the first of them, Orion," he answered. "And, in a sense, you then created us."
"What? I don't understand."
"How could you?"
"You created the human race so that we can help you," I said, repeating what I had heard.
"Ultimately, yes."
"But while the others think you will bring us humans to their aid, you actually plan to have us help you against them," I realized.
He stared at me.
"And that will make you the mightiest of all the gods, won't it?"
He hesitated for a moment before replying. "I am the mightiest of all the Creators, Orion. The others may not recognize that fact, but it is so."
Now I felt my lips twisting into a sardonic smile.
He knew my thought. "You think I do this out of egomania? Out of lust for worship by creatures I myself created?" He shook his head sadly. "How little you understand. Do you have any great desire for your sandals to adore you, Orion? Is it necessary for your happiness to have your sword or the knife hidden under your kilt to proclaim you as the greatest master they have ever known?"
"I don't understand..."
"How could you? How could you dream of the consequences that I am dealing with? Orion, I created the human race out of necessity, truly—but not the necessity to be adored! The universes are wide, Orion, and filled with dangers. I seek to protect the continuum, to keep it from being torn apart by forces that you could not even imagine. While the others dither and bicker, I act. I create. I command!"
"And to accomplish your goal it is necessary for Troy to win this war?"
"Yes!"
"And it was necessary to destroy the starship we were riding? Necessary to kill the woman I loved? The woman who loved me?"
For a moment he looked almost startled. "You recall that?"
"I remember the starship. The explosion. She died in my arms. We both died."
"I revived you. I returned you to life."
"And her?"
"She was a goddess, Orion. I can only revive creatures whom I myself have created."
"If she was a goddess, how could she die?"
"Gods and goddesses can die, Orion. Tales of our immortality are rather exaggerated. As are the pious recitations of our goodness and mercy."
I felt my heart thudding in my chest, the blood roaring in my ears. My head swam. I could barely breathe. I hated this man, this golden self-styled god, this murderer. Hated him with every fiber of my being. He claims to have created me, I told myself. Yet I will destroy him.
"I did not want to kill her, Orion," he said, and it almost sounded sincere. "It was beyond my control. She chose to make herself human. For your sake, Orion. She knew the risks and she accepted them for your sake."
"And died." A murderous rage was burning inside me. Yet when I tried to take a step toward him, I found I could not move. I was frozen, immobilized, unable even to clench my fists at my sides.
"Orion," said the object of my hatred, "you cannot blame me for what she did to herself."
How wrong he was!
"You must serve me whether you like it or not," he insisted. "There is no way for you to avoid your destiny, Orion." Then he added, muttering, almost to himself, "No way for either of us to avoid our destinies."
"I can refuse to serve you," I said stubbornly.
He lifted one golden eyebrow and considered me, the haughty, mocking tone back in his voice. "While you live, my angry creature, you will play your part in my plans. You cannot refuse because you can never know which acts of yours serve me and which do not. You stagger along blindly in your time-bound linearity, going from day to day, while I perceive space-time on the scale of the continuum."
"Grand talk," I spat. "You sound almost as grandiloquent as old Nestor."
His eyes narrowed. "But I speak the truth, Orion. You see time as past and present and future. I create time and manipulate it to keep the continuum from being torn asunder. And while you live, you will help me in this mighty task."
"While I live," I repeated. "Is that a threat?"
He smiled again. "I make no threats, Orion. I have no need to. I created you. I can destroy you. You have no memory of how many times you have died, do you? Yet I have revived you each time, so that you could serve me again. That is your destiny, Orion. To serve me. To be my Hunter."
"I want to be free," I shouted. "Not your puppet!"
"Pah! I waste my time trying to explain myself to you. No one is free, Orion. No creature can ever be free. Not as long as you live."
He clasped his arms together across his chest and disappeared as abruptly as a candle snuffed out by a sharp gust of wind. Suddenly I was alone in the fog-wrapped darkness of the plain before Troy.
As long as I live, I thought silently, I will struggle to reach your throat. It was a mistake to tell me that you are not immortal. I am the Hunter, and now I know the prey I seek. I will kill you, golden Apollo, Creator, whatever your true name and shape may be. While I live I will seek your death and nothing less. Just as you killed her, I will kill you.
"YOU there! Hold!"
I was standing in the Trojan camp again, a sudden sharp wind gusting in from the sea and shredding the mist that had covered the plain. Campfires dotted the darkness, and off in the distance the beetling towers of Troy bulked black and menacing against the moon-bright sky.
I tottered on unsteady feet, like a man who has drunk too much wine, like a man who has suddenly been pushed through a door that he had not seen. The Golden One and the other Creators were gone as completely as if they had been nothing more than a dream. But I knew they were real. They were out there in another plane of existence, toying with us, arguing over which side should win this wretched war. My hands clenched into fists as the memory of their faces and their words fueled the rage burning within me.
A pair of sentries approached me warily, heavy spears in their hands. I gulped down a deep breath of chill night air to calm myself.
"I am an emissary from the High King Agamemnon," I said, slowly and carefully. "I have been sent to speak to Prince Hector."
The sentries were an unlikely pair, one short and squat with a dirty, tangled black beard and a pot belly bulging his chain mail corselet, the other taller and painfully thin, either clean-shaven or too young to start a beard.
"Prince Hector the Tamer of Horses he wants to see," said the pot-belly. He laughed harshly. "So would I!"
The younger one grinned and showed a gap where a front tooth was missing.
"An emissary, eh?" Pot-belly eyed me suspiciously. "With a sword at his side and a mantle of chain mail across his shoulders. More likely a spy. Or an assassin."
I held up my herald's wand. "I have been sent by the High King. I am not here to fight. Take my sword and mantle, if they frighten you." I could have disabled them both before they knew what had happened, but that was not my mission.
"Be a lot safer to ram this spear through your guts and have done with it," said Pot-belly.
The youngster put out a restraining hand. "Hermes protects messengers, you know. I wouldn't want to draw down the anger of the Trickster."
Pot-belly scowled and muttered, but finally satisfied himself by taking my sword and chain mail. He did not search me, and therefore did not take the dagger strapped to my right thigh. He was more interested in loot than security.
Once Pot-belly had slipped my baldric across his shoulder and fastened my mantle under his quivering chins, the two of them led me to their chief.
They were Dardanians, allies of the Trojans who had come from several miles up the coast to fight against the invading Achaians. Over the next hour or so I was escorted from the chief of the Dardanian contingent to a Trojan officer, from there to the tent of Hector's chief lieutenants, and finally past the makeshift horse corral and the silently waiting chariots, tipped over with their long yoke poles poking into the air, to the small plain tent and guttering fire of Prince Hector.
At each stop I explained my mission again. Dardanians and Trojans alike spoke a dialect of the Greek spoken by the Achaians, different but not so distant as to be unintelligible. I realized that the city's defenders included contingents from many areas up and down the coast. The Achaians had been raiding their towns for years, and now they had all banded together under Trojan leadership to resist the barbarian invaders.
That was the Golden One's aim: to have the Trojans beat back the Achaians and gain supremacy over the Aegean. Eventually they would establish an empire that would span Europe, the Middle East, and India.
If that was his goal, then mine must be to prevent it from being achieved. If Odysseus was offering a compromise that would allow the Achaians to sail away without burning Troy to the ground, then I must sabotage the offer. I felt a momentary pang of conscience. Odysseus trusted me. Or, I asked myself, had he sent me on this diplomatic mission because he could better afford to lose me than one of his own people?
With those thoughts swirling in my head, I was brought before Hector.
His tent was barely large enough for himself and a servant. A pair of armored noblemen stood by the fire outside the tent's entrance, their bronze breastplates gleaming against the night. Insects buzzed and darted in the firelight. No slaves or women in sight. Hector himself stood at the entrance flap to the tent. He was a big man for these people, nearly my own height.
Hector wore no armor, no badge of his rank. Merely a soft clean tunic belted at the waist, with an ornamental dagger hanging from the leather belt. He had no need to impress anyone with his grandeur. He possessed that calm inner strength that needs no outward decorations.
In the flickering light of his campfire he studied me silently for a moment. Those same grave brown eyes. His face was handsome, intelligent, though there were lines of weariness around his eyes, furrows across his broad brow. Despite the fullness of his rich brown beard I saw that his cheeks were becoming hollow. The strain of this war was taking its toll on him.
"You are the man at the gate," he said finally. His words were measured, neither surprise nor anger in them.
I nodded.
He looked me over carefully. "Your name?"
"Orion."
"From where?"
"Far to the west of here. Beyond the seas where the sun sets."
"Beyond Okeanus?" he asked.
"Yes."
He puzzled over that, brow knitted, for a few moments. Then he asked, "What brings you to the plain of Ilios? Why are you fighting for the Achaians?"
"A duty I owe to a god," I said.
"Which god?"
"Athene."
"Athene sent you here to fight for the Achaians?" He seemed concerned at that, almost worried.
With a shake of my head, I answered, "I arrived at the Achaian camp the night before yesterday. I had never seen Troy before. Suddenly, in the midst of the fighting, I acted on impulse. I don't know what made me do what I did. It all happened in the flash of a moment."
Hector smiled tightly. "Battle frenzy. A god took control of your spirit, my friend, and inspired you to deeds no mortal could achieve unaided. It has happened to me many times."
I smiled back at him. "Yes, perhaps that is what happened to me."
"Have no doubt of it. Ares or Athene seized your spirit and filled you with battle frenzy. You could have challenged Achilles himself in such a state."
Slaves came out of the darkness to set up chairs of stretched hides and offer fruit and wine. Following Hector's lead, I sat and took a little of each. The quality of the Trojan wine was far superior to that of the Achaians.
"You carry the wand of a herald and say that you are here as an emissary of Agamemnon," Hector said, leaning back tiredly in his creaking chair.
"I bring an offer of peace."
"We have heard such offers before. Is there anything new in what Agamemnon proposes?"
I noticed that his two aides stepped closer, eager to hear what I had to say. I thought briefly of Odysseus, who trusted me. But I said: "The High King repeats his earlier offer of peace. If you will restore Helen and the fortune she brought from Sparta with her, and pay an indemnity for the costs the Achaians have incurred, Agamemnon will lead his ships away from Ilios and Troy."
Hector glanced up at his two standing lieutenants, who muttered grimly.
Then to me he said, "We did not accept these terms when the Achaians had us penned up inside our city walls, without allies. Now that we outnumber them and have them penned in their own camp, why should we even consider such insulting terms?"
I had to make it sound at least halfway convincing, I thought. "In the view of the Achaians, Prince Hector, your success today was helped greatly by the fact that Achilles did not enter the battle. He will not remain on the sidelines forever."
"One man," Hector countered.
"The best warrior in the Achaian host," I pointed out. "And his Myrmidones are a formidable fighting unit, I am told."
"True enough," admitted Hector. "Still, this offer of peace is no different than all the others, even though we now hold the upper hand."
"Then what am I to tell the High King?"
Hector got to his feet. "That is not my decision to make. I command the army, but my father is still king in Troy. He and his council must consider your offer."
I rose too. "King Priam?"
"Polydamas," he called, "conduct this herald to the king. Aeneas, spread the word to the chiefs that we will not attack until King Priam has considered the latest peace offering from Agamemnon."
A surge of elation swept through me. The Trojans will not attack the Achaian camp as long as I am dickering with their king! I can give Odysseus and the others a day's respite from battle, at least.
And then I realized that this is exactly what Odysseus had planned. The King of Ithaca had sent an expendable hero—one whom Hector would recognize, yet not someone important to the Achaian strength—into the Trojan camp in a crafty move to gain a day's recuperation from this morning's disaster.
I had thought that I was betraying Odysseus, but he had outsmarted both Hector and me.
Trying to look properly grave and not let my emotions show, I followed the Trojan nobleman called Polydamas through the camp on the plain and to the walls of Troy.
I entered the fabled city of Troy in the dead of night. The moon was up, but still it was so dark that I could see practically nothing. The city walls loomed above like ominous shadows. I saw feeble lanterns lighting a gate as we passed a massive old oak tree, tossing and sighing in the night breeze, leaning heavily, bent by the incessant wind of Ilios.
To approach the gate we had to follow a road that led alongside the beetling walls. Just before the gate a second curtain wall extended on the other side of the road, so that anyone coming up to the gate was vulnerable to fire from both sides, as well as ahead.
The gate itself seemed only lightly defended. Virtually the entire Trojan force was camped down by the beach, I realized. A trio of teenagers were lounging in the open gateway, their inevitable long spears resting against the stone wall. A few more stood on the battlements above.
Inside, a broad packed-earth street led between buildings that seemed no more than two stories tall. The moon's pale cold light only made the shadows of their shuttered fronts seem deeper and darker. It must have been well past midnight. Hardly anyone was stirring along this main street or in the black alleyways leading off it, not even a cat.
Polydamas was not a wordy fellow. In virtually total silence he led me to a low-roofed building and into a tiny room lit by the fluttering yellow-blue flame of a small copper oil lamp sitting on a three-legged wooden stool. There was a single narrow bed and a chest of cedarwood, nothing else. A rough woolen blanket covered the bed.
"You will be summoned to the king's presence in the morning," said Polydamas, his longest speech of the night. With not another word he left me, closing the wooden door softly behind him.
And bolting it.
With nothing better to do, I undressed, pulled back the scratchy blanket, and stretched out on the bed. It was springy; a thin mattress of feathers atop a webbing of ropes.
As I started to drowse off I suddenly realized that the Golden One might invade my dreams once again. For a while I tried to stave off sleep, but my body got the better of my will, and inevitably my eyes closed. My last waking thought was to wonder how I might make contact with some of the other Creators, with the Zeus who regarded the Golden One's plans so questioningly, with the woman who openly opposed him.
But if I did dream, I had no memory of it when I was awakened by the door bolt snapping back. I sat up, immediately alert, and reached for the dagger that I had unstrapped, but left on the bed between my body and the wall.
A serving woman backed into the room, carrying a basin and a jug of water. When she turned and saw me sitting there naked, she smiled, made a little curtsy, and deposited the pottery atop the cedarwood chest. Then she backed out of the room and shut the door. Outside, I could hear the giggling of several women.
A Trojan man entered my room after a single sharp rap on the door. He seemed more a courtier than a warrior. He was fairly tall but round-shouldered, soft-looking, with a bulging middle. His beard was quite gray, his pate balding, his tunic richly embroidered and covered with a long sleeveless robe of deep green.
"I am to conduct you to King Priam's audience chamber, once you have had your morning meal."
Diplomacy moved at a polite pace; I was glad of it. The Trojan courtier led me to the urinals in the back of the house, then back to my room for a quick washup. Breakfast consisted of fruit, cheese, and flat bread, washed down with goat's milk. We ate in the large kitchen that fronted the house. Half the room was taken up by a big circular hearth, under an opening in the roof. It was cold and empty except for a scattering of gray ashes that looked as if they had been there a long time.
Through the kitchen's open window I could see men and women going about their morning chores. Serving women attended us, eyeing me curiously. The courtier ignored them, except to give orders for more figs and honey.
Finally we walked out along what seemed to be Troy's only major street, sloping gently uphill toward a majestic building of graceful fluted columns and a steeply pitched roof. Priam's palace, I guessed. Or the city's main temple. Perhaps both. The sun was not high yet, but still it felt much warmer here in the street than out on the windy plain.
"Is that where we're going?" I pointed.
The courtier bobbed his head. "Yes, of course. The king's palace. A more splendid palace doesn't exist anywhere in the world—except perhaps in Egypt, of course."
I was surprised at how small the city actually was. And crowded. Houses and shops clustered together tightly. The street was unpaved, and sloped like a V so that water would run down its middle when it rained. Cart wheels had worn deep grooves in it. The men and women bustling about their morning's work seemed curious yet courteous. I received bows and smiles as we strolled up toward the palace.
"The royal princes, such as Hector and Aleksandros and their brothers, live in the palace with the king." My courtier was turning into a tour guide. He gestured back down the street. "Nearer the Scaean gate are the homes of the lesser princes and nobility. Fine homes they are, nevertheless, far finer than you will find in Mycenae or even Miletus."
We were walking through the market area now. Awning-shaded stalls lined the two-story high brick homes here, although I saw precious little merchandise on sale: bread, dried vegetables, a skinny lamb that bleated mournfully.
Yet the merchants, men and women both, seemed smiling and happy.
"You bring a day of peace," the courtier told me. "Farmers can bring their produce to market this morning. Wood-cutters 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 an argument. "Look at those walls! The Achaians will never be able to scale them."
I followed his admiring gaze down a crooked alley and saw the towered walls that rose above the houses. They did indeed look high and solid and strong.
"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 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? But, as if sensing that 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 upright as we passed the crimson-painted columns at the front of the palace and entered its cool interior. I saw no marble, which somehow surprised me. The columns and the thick palace walls were made of a grayish, granitelike stone, polished to gleaming smoothness. Inside, the floors were covered with brightly colored polished tiles. The walls were plastered and painted in bright yellows and reds, with blue or green borders running along the ceilings.
The interior was cold. Despite the sun's heat, 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, no hunting scenes, no proclamations of imperial power or bloodthirstiness.
Statues lined this corridor, most of them life-size, some smaller, several so large 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 the city's four main gates, before the war. Of course we brought them in here for safekeeping from the despoiling Achaians."
"Of course," I agreed.
The statues seemed to be marble. To my surprise, they were brightly painted. Hair and beards were deep black, with bluish highlights. Gowns and tunics were mostly gold, and real jewels adorned them. The flesh was delicately colored, and the eyes were painted so vividly that they almost seemed to be watching me.
I could not tell one from another. The gods all seemed broad-shouldered and bearded, the goddesses ethereally beautiful. Then I recognized Poseidon, a magnificently muscular figure with a deep curly beard 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.
And felt my knees give way.
It was the Golden One. Perfect in every detail, as if he had sat for a portrait. Every detail except one: The Trojan artist had painted his hair black, as all the other gods. But the face, the slight curl of the lip, the eyes—they stared down at me, slightly amused, slightly bored. I trembled. I fully expected the statue to move, to speak.
"Apollo," said the courtier. "The protector of our city." If he noticed how the statue affected me, he was too polite to mention it. Or perhaps it was reverence for the god.
I pulled my gaze away from the Golden One's painted eyes. My insides fluttered with anger and the frustration that comes with hopelessness. How could I even think of working against his wishes, of defying him, of killing him? Yet I will do it, I told myself. With an effort of will that seemed to wrench at the soul within me, I promised myself afresh that I would bring the Golden One to dust.
We started across the sunny courtyard. It was decked with blossoms and flowering shrubs. Potted trees were arranged artfully around a square central pool. I saw fish swimming there lazily.
"We also have our statue of Athene," the courtier said, pointing across the pool to a small wooden piece, scarcely three feet tall. "It is very ancient and very sacred."
The statue was facing away from us as we crossed the courtyard and entered the other wing of the palace. Instantly, as we stepped into the shade of the wide entrance hall, the temperature dropped precipitously.
More soldiers stood guard in this hallway, although I got the feeling that their presence was a matter of pomp and formality, not security. The courtier led me to a small chamber comfortably furnished with chairs of stretched hide and gleaming polished tables inlaid with beautiful ivory and silver. There was one window, which looked out on another, smaller, courtyard, and a massive wooden door decorated with bronze strapping. Closed.
"The king will see you shortly," he said, looking nervously toward the closed door.
I took a chair and willed my body to relax. I did not want to appear tense or apprehensive in front of the Trojan king. The courtier, whom I had assumed spent much of his life in this palace, seemed to be wound up tight. He paced the small chamber worriedly. I pictured him with a cigarette, puffing like an expectant father.
Finally he blurted, "Do you truly bring an offer of peace, or is this merely another Achaian bluff?"
So that was it. Beneath his confidence in the walls built by gods and the food and firewood gathered by their army and the eternal spring that Apollo himself protects—he was anxious to have the war ended and his city safe and at peace once more.
Before I could reply, though, that heavy door creaked open. Two men-at-arms pushed at it, and an old man in a green cloak similar to my courtier's motioned me to come to him. He leaned heavily on a long wooden staff topped with a gold sunburst symbol. His beard was the color of ashes, his head almost totally bald. As I ducked through the doorway and approached him, he squinted at me nearsightedly.
"Your proper name, herald?"
"Orion."
"Of?"
I blinked, wondering what he meant. Then I replied, "Of the House of Ithaca."
He frowned at that, but turned and took a few steps into the audience chamber, then banged his staff on the floor three times. I saw that the stone floor was deeply worn at that spot.
He called out, in a voice that may have once been rich and deep but now sounded like a cat yowling, "Oh Great King—Son of Laomedon, Scion of Scamander, Servant of Apollo, Beloved of the Gods, Guardian of the Hellespont, Protector of the Troad, Western Bulwark of the Hatti, Defender of Ilios—an emissary from the Achaians, one Orion by name, of the House of Ithaca."
The chamber was spacious, wide and high-ceilinged. Its middle was open to the sky, above a circular hearth that smoldered a dull red and sent up a faint spiral of gray smoke. Dozens of men and women stood among the painted columns on the far side of the hearth: the nobility of Troy, I supposed, or at least the noblemen who were too old to be with the army. And their ladies. Their robes were rich with vibrant colors and flashing jewels.
I stepped forward and beheld Priam, the King of Troy, sitting on a splendid throne of carved ebony inlaid with gold set upon a three-step-high dais. To my surprise, he was flanked on his right by Hector, who must have come up from the camp by the beach. On his left sat a younger man, and standing behind him—
She was truly beautiful enough to launch a thousand ships. Helen was blonde, golden curls falling past her shoulders. A small, almost delicate figure except for magnificent breasts covered only by the sheerest blouse. A girdle of gold cinched her waist, adding emphasis to the bosom. Even from across the wide audience chamber I could see that her face was incredible, sensuous yet wide-eyed with an appearance of innocence that no man could resist.
She leaned against the intricately carved back of Aleksandros's chair, the young prince on Priam's left had to be Aleksandros, I realized. Darker of hair and beard than Hector, almost prettily handsome. Helen rested one hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her and she smiled dazzlingly at him. Then they both turned their gaze toward me as I approached. Helen's smile disappeared the instant Aleksandros looked away from her. She regarded me with cool, calculating eyes.
Priam was older than Nestor, and obviously failing. His white beard was thin and ragged, his long hair also, as if some wasting disease had hold of him. He seemed sunk into his robes of royal purple as he sat slumped on his gold-inlaid throne, too tired even this early in the morning to sit upright or lift his arms out of his lap.
The wall behind his throne was painted in a seascape of blues and aquamarines. Graceful boats glided among sporting dolphins. Fishermen spread their nets into waters teeming with every kind of fish.
"My lord king," said Hector, dressed in a simple tunic, "this emissary from Agamemnon brings another offer of peace."
"Let us hear it," breathed Priam, as faintly as a sigh.
They all looked to me.
I glanced at the assembled nobility and saw an eagerness, a yearning, a clear hope that I carried an offer that would end the war. Especially among the women I could sense the desire for peace, although I realized that the old men were hardly firebrands.
I bowed deeply to the king, then nodded in turn to Hector and Aleksandros. I caught Helen's eye as I did so, and she seemed to smile slightly at me.
"O Great King," I began, "I bring you greeting from High King Agamemnon, leader of the Achaian host."
Priam nodded and waggled the fingers of one hand, as if urging me to get through the preliminaries and down to business.
I did. I told them not of Odysseus's offer to leave with Helen and nothing else, but of my elaboration: Helen, her fortune, and an indemnity for Agamemnon to distribute to his army.
I could feel the air in the chamber change. The eager expectation died. A somber reaction of gloom settled on them all.
"But this is nothing more than Agamemnon has offered in the past," wheezed Priam.
"And which we have steadfastly refused," Hector added.
Aleksandros laughed. "If we refused such insulting terms when the Achaians were pounding at our gates, why should we even consider them now, when we have the barbarians penned up at the beach? In a day or two we'll be burning their ships and slaughtering them like the cattle they are."
"I am a newcomer to this war," I said. "I know nothing of your grievances and rights. I have been instructed to offer the terms for peace, which I have done. It is for you to consider them and make an answer."
"I will never surrender my wife," Aleksandros snapped. "Never!"
Helen smiled at him and he reached up to take her hand in his.
"A newcomer, you say?" Priam asked, his curiosity pricked enough to light his eyes. "Yet you claim to be of the House of Ithaca. When you first ducked your head past the lintel of our doorway I thought you might be the one they call Great Ajax."
I replied, "Odysseus has taken me into his household, my lord king. I arrived on these shores only a few days ago..."
"And single-handedly stopped me from storming the Achaian camp," Hector said, somewhat ruefully. "Too bad that Odysseus has adopted you. I wouldn't mind having such a fearless man at my side."
Surprised by his offer, and wondering what it might imply, I answered merely, "I fear that would be impossible, my lord."
"Yes," Hector agreed. "Too bad, though."
Priam stirred on his throne, coughed painfully, then said, "We thank you for the message you bring, Orion of the House of Ithaca. Now we must consider before making answer."
He gestured a feeble dismissal. I bowed again and went back to the anteroom. The guards closed the heavy door behind me.
I was alone in the small chamber; the courtier who had guided me earlier had disappeared. I went to the window and looked out at the lovely garden, so peaceful, so bright with flowers and humming bees intent on their morning's work. No hint of war there: merely the endless cycle of birth, growth, death, and rebirth.
I thought about the words the Golden One had spoken to me. How many times had I died and been reborn? To what purpose? He wanted Troy to win this war, or at least survive the Achaian siege. Therefore my desire was the same as Agamemnon's: to crush Troy, to burn it to the ground, to slaughter its people and destroy it forever.
Destroy that garden? Burn this palace? Slaughter Hector and aged Priam and all the rest?
I clenched my fists and squeezed my eyes tight. Yes! I told myself. Just as the Golden One would slaughter Odysseus and old Poletes. Just as he burned my love to death.
"Orion of Ithaca."
I wheeled from the window. A single soldier stood at the doorway, bareheaded, wearing a well-oiled leather harness rather than armor, a short sword at his hip.
"Follow me, please."
I followed him down a long hallway and up a flight of stairs, then through several rooms that were empty of people, although richly furnished and decorated with gorgeous tapestries. They will burn nicely, I found myself thinking. Up another flight we went, and finally he ushered me into a comfortable sitting room, with undraped windows and an open doorway that looked out on a terrace and the distant sea. Lovely murals decorated the walls, scenes of peaceful men and women in a pastel world of flowers and gentle beasts.
The soldier closed the door and left me alone. But not for long. Through the door on the opposite side of the room, a scant few moments later, stepped the beautiful Helen.
SHE was breathtaking, there is no denying it. She wore a flounced skirt of shimmering rainbow colors with golden tassels that tinkled as she walked toward me. Her corselet was now as blue as the Aegean sky, her white blouse so gauzy that I could see the dark circles of the areolae around her nipples. She wore a triple gold necklace and more gold at both wrists and earlobes. Jeweled rings glittered on her fingers.
She was tiny, almost delicate, despite her hour-glass figure. Her skin was like cream, unblemished and much lighter than the women I had seen in the Achaian camp. Her eyes were as deeply blue as the Aegean, her lips lush and full, her hair the color of golden honey, with ringlets falling well past her lovely shoulders. One stubborn curl hung down over her forehead. She wore a scent of flowers: light, clean, yet beguiling.
Helen smiled at me and gestured toward a chair. She took a cushioned couch, her back to the open windows. I sat and waited for her to speak. In truth, just looking at her against the background of the blue sky and bluer sea was a feast that seemed too good for mere words.
"You say you are a stranger to this land." Her voice was low, melodious. I could understand how Aleksandros, or any other man, would dare anything to have her. And keep her.
I nodded and found that I had to swallow once before I could speak. "My lady, I arrived on a boat only a few days ago. Before then, all I knew of Troy was... stories told by wayfarers."
"You are a sailor, then?"
"Not really," I said. "I am a... traveler, a wanderer."
She looked at me with a hint of suspicion in those clear blue eyes. "Not a warrior?"
"I have been a warrior, from time to time, but that is not my profession."
"Yet it may be your destiny."
I had no answer for that.
Helen said, "You serve the goddess Athene." It was not a question. She had excellent intelligence sources, apparently.
Nodding, I replied, "That is true."
She bit her lower lip. "Athene despises me. She is the enemy of Troy."
"Yet her statue is honored..."
"You cannot fail to honor so powerful a goddess, Orion. No matter how Athene hates me, the people of this city must continue to placate her as best they can. Certain disaster will overtake them if they do not."
"Apollo protects the city," I said.
She nodded. "Yet I fear Athene." Helen looked beyond me, looking into the past, perhaps. Or trying to see the future.
"My lady, is there some service you wish me to do for you?"
Her gaze focused on me once again. A faint smile dimpled her cheeks. "You wonder why I summoned you?"
"Yes."
The smile turned impish. "Don't you think that I might want a closer look at such a handsome stranger? A man so tall, with such broad shoulders? Who stood alone against Hector and his chariot team and turned them away?"
I bowed my head slightly. "May I ask you a question, my lady?"
"You may—although I don't promise to answer."
"All the world wonders: Did Aleksandros actually abduct you, or did you leave Sparta with him willingly?"
Her smile remained. It even grew wider, until she threw her head back and laughed a hearty, genuinely amused laugh.
"Orion," she said at last, "you certainly don't understand the ways of women."
I may have blushed. "That's true enough," I admitted.
"Let me tell you this much," Helen said. "No matter how or why I accompanied Aleksandros to this great city, I will not willingly return to Sparta." Before I could reply she quickly added, "Not that I harbor ill feelings for Menalaos, my first husband. He was kind to me."
"But Aleksandros is kinder?"
She spread her arms. "Look about you, Orion! You have eyes, use them. What woman would willingly live as the wife of an Achaian lord when she could be a princess of Troy?"
"But Menalaos is a king..."
"And an Achaian queen is still regarded less than her husband's dogs and horses. A woman in Sparta is a slave, be she wife or concubine, there is no real difference. Do you think there would be women present in the great hall at Sparta when an emissary arrives with a message for the king? Or at Agamemnon's Mycenae or Nestor's Pylos or even in Odysseus's Ithaca? No, Orion. Here in Troy women are regarded as human beings. Here there is civilization."
"Then your preference for Aleksandros is really a preference for Troy," I said.
She put a finger to her lips, as if thinking over the words she wished to use. Then, "When I was wed to Menalaos I had no say in the choice. The young lords of Achaia all wanted me—and my dowry. My father made the decision. If, the gods forbid, the Achaians should win this war and force me to return to Sparta with Menalaos, I will again be chattel."
"Would you agree to return to Menalaos if it meant that Troy would be saved from destruction?"
"Don't ask such a question! Do you think Agamemnon fights for his brother's honor? The Achaians are intent on destroying this city. I am merely their excuse for attacking."
"So I have heard from others, in the Achaian camp."
"Priam is near death," Helen said. "Hector will die in battle; that is foretold. But Troy itself need not fall, even if Hector does."
And, I thought, if Hector dies Aleksandros will become king. Making Helen the queen of Troy.
She fixed me with her eyes and said, "Orion, you may say this to Menalaos: If he wants me to return to him, he will have to win me by feats of battle. I will not go willingly to a man as the consolation prize for losing this war."
I took in a deep breath. She was far wiser than I had assumed. She unquestionably wants Troy to win this war, wants to remain in this city so that one day she can be its queen. Yet she wants to tell her former husband that she will come back to him—if he wins! She's telling him, through me, that she will return to Sparta and be the docile Achaian wife—if and when Troy is burned to the ground.
Clever woman! No matter who wins, she will protect her own lovely skin.
We chatted for a few moments more, but it was clear that Helen had imparted the message she wanted me to bear back to the Achaians. Finally she rose, signaling that our meeting was ended. I got to my feet and went to the door by which I had entered the chamber. Sure enough, the guard was outside waiting to escort me back to the king's audience hall.
No one was there except the courtier who had been with me earlier in the morning. The columned hall was empty, echoing.
"The king and royal princes are still deliberating on your message," he whispered. "You are to wait."
I waited. We strolled through several of the palace's halls and chambers and finally out into the big courtyard we had come through that morning. The hot sun felt good on my bare arms.
Out of curiosity I walked across the garden to the small statue of Athene. It was barely the length of my arm, and obviously very old, weathered by many years of rain and wind. Unlike the other, grander statues, it was unpainted. Or, rather, the original paint had long since worn away and had never been replaced.
Athene. The warrior goddess was dressed in a long robe, yet carried a shield and spear. A plumed helmet rested on the back of her head, pushed up and away from her face.
I looked at that face and the breath gushed out of me. It was her face, the face of the woman I had loved. The face of the goddess that the Golden One had killed.
SO it was true. The gods are not immortal. Just as the Golden One had told me. And I knew that he had not lied about the rest: The gods are neither merciful nor beneficent. They play their games and make up their own rules while we, their creatures, try to make sense of what they do to us.
The rage burned in me. They are not immortal. The gods can be killed. I can kill the Golden One. And I will, I promised myself anew. How, I did not know. When, I had no idea. But by the flames that burned inside me I swore that I would destroy him, no matter how long it took and no matter what the cost.
I swung my gaze around the graceful flowered courtyard of Priam's palace. Yes, this is where I would start. He wants to save Troy, to make it the center of an empire that spans Europe and Asia. Then I will destroy it, crush it, slaughter its people, and burn its buildings to the ground.
"Orion."
I blinked, as though waking from a dream. Hector stood before me. I had not seen him approaching.
"Prince Hector," I said.
"Come with me. We have an answer for Agamemnon.
I followed him into another part of the palace. As before, Hector wore only a simple tunic, almost bare of adornment. No weapons. No jewelry. No proclamation of his rank. He carried his nobility in his person, and anyone who saw him knew instinctively that here was a man of merit and honor.
Yet, as I matched him stride for stride through the halls of the palace, I saw again that the war had taken its toll of him. His bearded face was deeply etched by lines around the mouth and eyes. His brow was creased and a permanent notch of worry had worn itself into the space between his eyebrows.
We walked to the far side of the palace and up steep narrow steps in murky darkness lit only by occasional slits of windows. Higher and higher we climbed the steep, circling stone steps, breathing hard, around and around the stairwell's narrow confines until at last we squeezed through a low square doorway onto the platform at the top of Troy's tallest tower.
"Aleksandros will join us shortly," said Hector, walking over to the giant's teeth of the battlements. It was almost noon, and hot in the glaring sun despite the stiff breeze from the sea that huffed at us and set Hector's brown hair flowing.
From this high vantage I could see the Achaian camp, dozens of long black boats drawn up on the beach behind the sandy rampart and trench I had helped to dig barely forty-eight hours earlier. The Trojan army was camped on the plain, tents and chariots dotted across the worn-bare soil, cook fires sending thin tendrils of smoke into the crystalline sky. A fair-sized river flowed across the plain to the south and emptied into the bay. A smaller stream passed to the north. The Achaian camp's flanks were anchored on the two riverbanks.
Beyond the gentle waves rolling up onto the beach I saw an island near the horizon, a brown hump of a worn mountain, and beyond that another hovering ghostlike in the blue hazy distance.
"Well, brother, have you told him?"
I turned and saw Aleksandros striding briskly toward us. Unlike Hector, his tunic looked as soft as silk and he wore a handsome royal-blue cloak over it. A jeweled sword was at his hip, and more jewels flashed on his fingers and at his throat. His hair and beard were carefully trimmed and gleamed with sweet-smelling oil. His face was unlined, though he was not that many years younger than his brother.
"I was waiting for you," said Hector.
"Good! Then let me give him the news." Smiling nastily, Aleksandros said to me, "You may tell fat Agamemnon that King Priam rejects his insulting offer. Moreover, by this time tomorrow our chariots will be riding through your camp, burning your boats and slaying your white-livered Achaians until nothing is left but ashes and bones. Our dogs will feast well tomorrow night."
I kept my face immobile.
Hector made the tiniest shake of his head, then laid a restraining hand on his brother's blue-cloaked shoulder. "Our father is not feeling well enough to see you again. And although my brother's hot words may seem insulting, the answer that we have for Agamemnon is that we reject his offer of peace."
"And any offer that includes returning my wife to the barbarian!" Aleksandros snapped.
"Then we will have war again tomorrow," I said.
"Indeed we will," said Aleksandros.
"Do you really think you are strong enough to break through the Achaian defenses and burn their fleet?"
"The gods will decide," Hector replied.
"In our favor," added Aleksandros.
I was beginning to dislike this boastful young man. "It is one thing to fight from chariots on this plain," I gestured toward the battlefield bounded by the beach, the two rivers, and the bluff on which the city stood. "It is another to break into the Achaian camp and fight their entire host on foot. That will not be a battle of hero against hero. Every man in the Achaian camp will be fighting for his life."
"Don't you think we're fighting for our lives?" Aleksandros retorted. "And the lives of our wives and children?"
"I don't think you can wipe out the Achaians," I insisted. "Not with the forces I see camped on the plain."
Aleksandros laughed. "You are looking in the wrong direction, barbarian. Look there, instead!"
He pointed inland, toward the distant wooded hills and the mountains that bulked beyond them, "There lies the empire of the Hatti," Aleksandros said. "It spreads from this shore far to the east and south. The Hatti High King has fought wars with the Egyptians, Orion. And won them! He is our ally."
I drew the obvious conclusion. "You expect help from him."
"It is already on the way. We put up with the Achaian raids on the farms and towns nearby, but when pompous Agamemnon landed his army here, we sent a delegation to the High King of the Hatti, in his capital at Hattusas."
Hector said calmly, "I saw that city when I was a lad, Orion. It could swallow Troy ten times over. It is immense, and the power of the Hatti makes it so."
I said nothing.
"So far we have fought the Achaians only with the help of our neighbors, the Dardanians and other peoples of the Troad," Aleksandros resumed. "But when the Hatti send their troops to aid us, Agamemnon's army will be utterly crushed."
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.
Before Aleksandros could answer, Hector said, "Because we have decided to make Agamemnon a counter offer, Orion. We did not seek this war. We prefer peace, and the gentler arts of commerce and trade, to the blood and fire of battle."
"But we don't fear battle!" Aleksandros insisted.
Silencing his brother with a stern glance, Hector continued, "King Priam offers a simple plan for peace. If Agamemnon will remove his army and return to Achaia, my father the king offers to negotiate a new treaty of friendship and trade that will allow Mycenae free passage of the Hellespont."
"Mycenae?" I asked. "What about the other Achaian cities: Ithaca, Nestor's Pylos, Tiryns..."
"Mycenae," repeated Hector. "As High King, Agamemnon can make his own agreements with the other Achaian cities. As long as the trade is carried in Mycenaean boats, Troy will make no objection."
A masterful stroke of diplomacy! Dangle the carrot of free passage through the straits to Agamemnon, and to him alone, so that he will have a commanding position among the other Achaian powers. At the very least, it should set up an argument among the various Achaian petty kings that will destroy their ability to make a united war against Troy. Masterful.
"I will take this message to Agamemnon," I lied.
"Do that," snapped Aleksandros. "And tell the greedy High King that if he does not accept our offer by dawn tomorrow, his body will be feeding kites and dogs by sunset."
I stared at him. He tried to meet my gaze, but after a moment he looked away.
"We will expect an answer by sunrise tomorrow," Hector said. "If our offer is not accepted, we will force the Achaian camp. Even if we are not successful in that, it is only a matter of a few days before the Hatti army reaches us."
"We've had messages from smoke signals," Aleksandros boasted. "Their army has been seen within a three-day march of our walls."
I looked back to Hector. He nodded and I believed him.
"There has been enough killing," Hector said. "It is time to make peace. Agamemnon can return to Mycenae with honor. We make him a generous offer."
"But Helen stays with me!" Aleksandros added.
I had to smile at that. I could hardly blame him for wanting to keep her.
Hector gave me a four-man guard of honor that escorted me out the same Scaean gate I had entered the night before. Now I could see the massive walls of Troy close-up. Almost I could believe that gods had helped to build them. Immense blocks of stone were wedged and fitted together to a height of more than nine meters, with high square towers surmounting them at the major gates and corners. The walls sloped outward, so that they were thickest at ground level.
Since the city was built on the bluff overlooking the plain of Ilios, the attacking army would have to fight its way uphill before ever reaching the walls.
I returned to the Achaian camp to find old Poletes waiting at the makeshift gate for me.
"What news do you bring?" he asked me eagerly. I realized that his voice, though thin and grating, had none of the rasping and wheezing quality that had afflicted Priam.
"Nothing good," I said. "There will be battle tomorrow."
Poletes's skinny shoulders slumped beneath his worn tunic. "The fools. The bloody fools."
I knew better, but I did not reveal it. There would be battle tomorrow because I would not let the two sides know that each side was prepared to make peace.
I went straight to Odysseus, with Poletes skipping beside me, his knobby legs working overtime to keep pace with me. Soldiers and noblemen alike stared at me, reading in my grim face the news I brought from Troy. The women looked too, then turned away, knowing that tomorrow would bring blood and carnage and terror. Many of them were natives of this land, and hoped to be freed of bondage by the Trojan soldiery. But they knew, I think, that in the frenzy and bloodlust of battle, their chances of being raped and put to the sword were much more likely than their chances of being rescued and returned to their rightful households.
Odysseus's quarters were on the deck of his boat. He received me alone, dismissing his aides and servants to hear my report. He was naked and wet from his morning swim, rubbing himself briskly with a rough towel. Sitting on a three-legged stool, he rested his back against the boat's only mast. The musty canvas that had served as a tent when it had been raining was folded back now that the hot sun was shining, but his bearded face was as dark and foreboding as any storm cloud as I told him that Priam and his sons rejected the Achaian peace terms.
"They offered no counter terms?" he asked, once I had finished my report.
Without hesitating, I lied, "None. Aleksandros said he would never surrender Helen under any circumstances."
"Nothing else?"
"He and Prince Hector told me that a Hatti army is marching to their assistance."
Odysseus's eyes widened. "What? How far are they from here?"
"A few days' march, from what Aleksandros said."
He tugged at his beard, real consternation in his face. "That cannot be," he muttered. "It cannot be!"
I waited in silence, and looked out across the rows of beached boats. Each of them had its mast in place, as if the crews were making ready to sail. The masts had not been up the day before.
Finally Odysseus jumped to his feet. "Come with me," he said urgently. "Agamemnon must hear of this."