The Hittite

1

The dreadful news reached us when we were less than a day’s march from the capital, returning home after a long, hard campaign against the wily Armenians, in the mountains far to the north. The gods had turned their backs on our rightful emperor; he had been poisoned by his own scheming sons. Now, lusting for the power their father had wielded, the sons made war on one another.

The empire of the Hatti stretched from beyond the twin peaks of Mount Ararat in the northeast to the shores of the Great Sea. Our armies sacked Babylon and fought the prideful Egyptians at Qadesh and Megiddo in the gaunt lands of Canaan. With swords of iron and discipline even stronger we conquered all that we encountered.

Except ourselves.

Now Hattusas, our capital, had crumbled into chaos. Even before we reached its outer wall we could hear the tumult of terrified voices wailing to the gods for protection. It seemed as if the city’s entire population was streaming out of the gates: white-bearded men, aged grandmothers, children wide-eyed with fear, whole families pushing carts loaded with their meager possessions, mothers with crying babies in their arms, all blindly fleeing. Smoke was rising from the citadel up on the hill in the center of the city, an ugly black plume staining the clouded sky.

I knew what each of my men was thinking: what’s happened to my family, my wife, my children, my mother and father? I felt that fear clutch at my own heart as we reached the city’s main gate.

“Stay together,” I commanded my squad. “March in step.”

I knew that we would need iron discipline now more than ever. They obeyed, good soldiers that they were. Instinct born of hard training made us move as one unit, spears at the ready.

Once inside the gates the stream of fleeing populace turned into a torrent of people ashen with panic, all rushing to get away from the city. And we saw why. Gangs of young men were marauding drunkenly through the twisting streets, breaking into houses and shops, stealing all that they could carry, brutally raping any women they found. Screams and pleas for mercy filled the air.

“Where are the constables?” one of my men cried.

Gone, I realized. With the emperor dead and his sons warring against each other, order and safety had collapsed into lawlessness.

A woman with a baby in her arms and two more little ones trailing behind her rushed up to me, her face twisted by fear.

“Soldiers! Help us! Protect us!”

My instinct was to fight these drunken looters, to safeguard the defenseless people they were preying upon. But all I had was my squad of twenty. Twenty men against hundreds, one squad of soldiers against a city in anarchy. It was hopeless.

“Leave the city while you can,” I told her. “Get away until this madness burns itself out.”

She stared at me, disbelieving. Then she spat on me. My hand flew to the pommel of my sword. I told her through gritted teeth, “Get away while you can. Leave while you’re still alive.”

She turned and hurried to rejoin the stream of people fleeing for the city’s gates.

“Stay in order,” I shouted to my squad. “We can’t fight them all.”

The men grumbled but we marched on, eyes forward, shields on our arms and spears upright, up the narrow street that led to the citadel and to the home of my father, where my wife and sons lived. Three of my men had family in the city, I knew. The rest came from elsewhere in the empire.

“We’re going to the citadel. From there you can go to your families or to the barracks,” I told my men.

We marched toward the citadel, toward the house of my father.

The gangs gave us wide berth as we marched in step up the cobbled main street toward the citadel. Twenty men in the emperor’s gear, each armed with a nine-foot spear and killing sword were enough to make most of them melt away from us. Someone threw a rock that bounced off my shield. When the twenty of us wheeled and leveled our spears in that direction, the looters scattered away like the vermin they were, scurrying for safety.

“Stay together,” I repeated, resuming our march up the street. As usual, I stayed on the right end of our line, since I am left-handed and wear my shield on my right arm. Thus we presented a solid line of shields from end to end.

It was hard to watch the rioters looting and roaring, staggering from house to house, dragging out shrieking terrified women, and do nothing. Dead bodies lay in the street. Blood ran in the gutter down its middle. Young toughs in knots of four and five lurched from shop to shop, flagons of wine in their blood-soaked hands. I even saw bands of soldiers, still wearing the emperor’s leather and iron, smashing and looting alongside the wild-eyed gangs.

“We’ll tend to our own families,” I repeated to my men. “There’s nothing we can do for the others.”

Truly, the city was in anarchy. Twenty soldiers would not be able to restore order. Twenty hundred were needed. The streets smelled of blood and panic. Smoke was thickening in the sky.

The stone tower of the citadel, up atop the hill, was in flames. Fire and death are ever the twin sons of war, and the black smoke rising from the royal palace told me that the gods had turned their backs on the Hatti. My home was hard by the high wall that encircled the citadel. My father, my wife, my two little sons were there. So I hoped.

“Stay in order,” I called to my men. “I’ll drub the man who breaks ranks.”

We marched onward toward the burning citadel. None of the drunken looters came near us. Brave they were with their clubs and daggers against cringing women and quaking old men; against a disciplined squad of armed spearmen they made no opposition. We marched upslope along the cobbled street and everyone gave us a wide berth.

Most of my men were too young to be married. They lived in the barracks inside the citadel wall. The three who had homes to go to I released once we reached the wall, with orders to rejoin the squad before nightfall. The others milled about uncertainly.

“Stay together,” I told them. “Go to the barracks and save what you can. Then form up again here, by this house.”

It was the house of my father, the house where I had been born. And my sons, as well.

Like all the others along the street, my father’s house was braced along the citadel wall. Built of well-fitted stone, it leaned slightly aslant. Its one window was tightly shuttered, but the door was ajar, leaning crookedly on its hinges. Not a good sign, I thought. The roof thatch was smoldering, probably from a spark wafted on the breeze. The very air was thickening with smoke from the burning citadel.

I stepped into the shadowy interior of the house, my eyes quickly adjusting to the gloom. My heart sank. The room had been ransacked; table overturned, chairs smashed to splinters. The fireplace was cold and dark. I looked up to the loft where the beds were; silent, empty. The bedclothes had been torn off and ripped.

Then, in the far corner where my father had often told me tales of war and conquest, I saw his withered body on the packed earthen floor, huddled beneath a bloodstained cloak.

I had seen dead bodies before, by the score, by the hundreds. Yet the sight of my father there in the shadows made my throat go dry. I sank to my knees beside him and gently, gently turned him so I could see his face.

They had battered him terribly. Yet his eyes fluttered, then focused on me.

“Lukka …” His voice was a tortured sigh.

“Don’t try to speak. Let me—”

He clutched at my arm, his aged fleshless fingers still as strong as a hawk’s talons. “I knew you would return.” He coughed painfully. “I knew …”

“Quiet, Father. Quiet. I’ll get a healer, a priest.”

“No need. No use.”

He coughed blood.

“Your sons,” he gasped. “Gone …”

“Gone? Where?”

“They fled.” He coughed again, his frail body spasming in my arms. “Your wife was mad with panic. Slavers were breaking into the houses …”

“Slavers?”

“She feared them … she took my grandsons …”

The third child of war, I thought. The poor wretches who were not killed or maimed were made into slaves.

“Find them!” my father commanded me. Gripping my arm even harder, he hissed, “Find them. My grandsons. They are my flesh. Find them, Lukka. Find them!”

Those were his last words to me. He died in my arms, his blood soaking into the earthen floor while smoke from the burning thatch made my eyes sting and water.

2

My sons. My wife. Find them.

I took a spade from the corner by the fireplace, where my father had always kept his tools. Coughing from the thickening smoke, I dug a shallow grave for him there in his house, the home of my ancestors. I tried to remember the words for the dead, but my mind would not recall them. All I could think of was his final command to me. Find his grandsons.

If the slavers have found them they’re already dead, I thought. Slavers don’t keep young children, especially boys. Mouths to feed, and too small to do any useful work.

I got up from my knees while choking smoke filled the room and eager flames licked across the timbers of the roof. I stepped out onto the street. The air was thick with smoke. More houses were burning, I could see, as swaggering gangs of looters put the torch to what ever they could not carry away with them, roaring with drunken laughter. Men can turn into beasts so easily, I realized. Take away the authority of the emperor and even trained soldiers become looting, raping animals.

I wanted to kill them. Kill them all. Slash their guts out and watch their eyes go wide with pain and shock. But that was nonsense, of course. I could kill five of them, ten, a dozen. But in the end I would be swarmed under and cut to pieces. What would that accomplish? So I stayed my hand and waited in the doorway of the house in which I had been born.

The sky seemed to be darkening; drops of rain began to spatter the cobblestones. Not hard enough to stop the flames that were crackling on the roof, though.

My squad was nowhere to be seen. They’ll be back, I told myself. At sundown, they’ll return, just as I ordered them to.

But I wondered.

The world had split apart. The empire was in ashes and ruins. And my father had commanded me to find his grandsons, my little boys, and their mother, my wife: Aniti.

I had first met her on the day we were married in the temple of Asertu, nearly six years earlier. The two families had arranged the marriage while I was away on campaign with the army. A soldier’s life is not his own. I had been a soldier since I was fourteen, like my father before me. I had no choice; he was accustomed to giving commands and having them obeyed. Before my beard was anything more than a wisp he led me to the barracks and entered me in his squad. Thus I spent most of my days in long campaigns far from home, carrying out the emperor’s orders.

Aniti. I tried to remember how much time we had spent together in the years we had been married: a few months, all told. Enough to father two sons by her. She was a pleasant enough woman, not given to anger, never sullen. But I could not recall the color of her eyes, nor the sound of her voice.

The rain became heavier, making rivulets that flowed among the cobblestones. The roof of the house crashed down in a shower of sparks and flame, as if the gods honored my father’s grave with sacred fire. I pulled my cloak tighter around me while I stood in the chilling rain and waited for my men to return.

As it grew darker they began to show up. One, then a pair of them, then another three. By the time it was fully dark eighteen of the twenty were standing in the rain-soaked street, their cloaks over their heads.

“Nerik isn’t coming, Lukka,” said Magro, usually the jokester among my men. He wasn’t joking this day. He looked miserable beneath his dripping cloak. “I saw him go off with some of his friends from the barracks.”

“And Hartu?” I called to them. “Anybody seen him?”

Head shakes and mumbles. Hartu had family in the city, I knew. He was the eldest son; his parents probably needed him more than I did—if they still lived.

We were eighteen men, eighteen soldiers of an army that no longer existed. As individuals we would be as helpless as any fleeing refugee. But if we stayed together we might be able to survive. As one lone man I could never hope to find my sons. But with my squad of disciplined spearmen …

I made a decision. “All right. Form up. We march.”

“March?” asked big, slow-witted Zarton. “To where?”

“To find my sons,” I told them.

3

For six months I led my squad of men westward, across the chaos and anarchy of the collapsed empire. We had to fight most of the way, against bandits, against villagers and farmers, against other desperate squads of former soldiers like ourselves.

Soon enough we discovered the remains of a refugee caravan. It had been attacked by bandits. The dead were strewn across the ground like a child’s broken toys. My wife and sons were not among them, thank the gods. I learned from one of the wounded guards who had been left to die that those who survived the attack were being herded to the slave market at Troy, far to the west, on the coast of the Aegean Sea.

Slaves. Slavers wouldn’t keep two little boys, they’d kill them on the spot. Aniti, my wife, what of her? I wondered. A woman isn’t responsible for what happens to her when she is in captivity, but still … a slave, powerless, defenseless. I had to squeeze my eyes shut to blot out the visions that came to my mind.

I thanked the dying guard and eased his way into the next life with a dagger to his throat. Then I searched the ground once again, until it was too dark to see, but my sons were not among the bodies scattered across the wreckage of the caravan.

So I pushed my men onward, toward Troy. They grumbled as soldiers always do, but they had no real choice. Together we were a formidable band of men, armed and disciplined. We lived off the land, became little better than bandits ourselves.

Bad dreams filled my sleep: dreams of my infant boys lying broken and dead in a roadside ditch. Dreams of my wife on the auction block of the slave merchants.

Some nights I dreamed of Hattusas, saw the city in flames while ravaging mobs looted and raped through the streets. In my dream I saw the old emperor die, poisoned by his own sons, and I was powerless to help my emperor. Try as I might I could not move, could not even shout a warning to him.

Then it wasn’t the emperor who was dying, it was my father, his life’s blood seeping into the dirt floor of my house while choking smoke filled the room and eager flames licked across the timbers of the roof.

“Gone,” my father moaned. “Taken by slavers … your wife, your sons … gone … Find them … Find my grandsons.”

He died in my arms. The burning house crashed in on me.

I snapped awake and sat upright on the meager pallet of straw we had scraped together. Blinking the sleep away I slowly recalled where we were. A farmstead in the brown, scrubby hills off the royal road that led to Troy.

The farm wench beside me stirred slightly, then turned over, snoring.

I was soaked in sweat, like a weak woman instead of a Hatti soldier. In the gray light of early dawn I reached out my hand. My sword lay by my side. It had never been more than an arm’s length away from me, not for these past six months.

Perhaps my wife and children were already dead; we had found corpses enough along the royal road. But not my sons. Not my wife. Not yet.

How long can they live under the slavers’ lash? I wondered. My sons were little more than babies; the elder hardly five, his brother two years younger. How can she protect them, protect herself ? I felt as if I had been thrown into the deepest of all the world’s black pits, cut off from light and air and all hope. Suffocating, drowning, already dead and merely staggering through the motions of a living man.

Enough! I commanded myself. Don’t let despair swallow you. Battles are lost before they begin when soldiers surrender themselves to despair.

Reaching out my hand, I lifted my naked sword. Its solid weight felt comforting in the predawn gray. A Hatti soldier. What does that mean when the empire no longer exists? When there is no emperor to give commands, no army to carry the might of the imperial will to the far corners of the world?

All that matters to me now is my two little boys, I told myself. And my wife. I will find them. I will free them, no matter what it takes. Or die in the trying.

I got to my feet and gathered up my clothes, my iron-studded leather jerkin, my helmet and oxhide shield. As I stepped outside the crude lean-to that passed for a barn I saw that the sun was already tingeing the eastern horizon with a soft pink light.

My troopers were beginning to stir. Twelve of us were left, out of the original twenty. We did not look much like a squad of Hatti soldiers now, a unit of the army that served as the emperor’s mailed fist. Six months of living off the land, six months of raiding villages for food and fighting other marauding bands of former soldiers had transformed us into marauders ourselves.

I felt grimy. My beard itched as if tiny devils lived in it. There was a pond between the barn and deserted hut of a farm house. I waded into it. The water was shockingly cold, but I felt better for it.

By the time I had dried myself and pulled on my clothes, most of my men had risen from the blankets they had thrown on the ground and were stumbling through their morning pissing and complaining.

I waved to Magro, who had taken his turn as lookout, up on the big rock by the road. He came down and joined the men who were starting a cook fire. We had nothing but a handful of beans and a few moldy cabbages; the farm house and barn had already been picked clean, empty except for the sullen-faced wench we had found hiding in the dung pile.

I saw little Karsh sitting awkwardly on the ground, craning his neck to peer at the gash on his shoulder. He was a Mittani, not a true Hatti, but he was a good soldier despite his small size. More than a week ago he had taken a thrust by a screaming farmer who had leaped at us from behind a door, wielding a scythe. I myself had dispatched the wild-eyed old man, nearly hacking his head from his shoulders with one swing of my iron sword.

“How’s the shoulder, little one?” I asked. Karsh had been a downy-cheeked recruit when he had first joined my squad. Now he looked as lean and grim as any of us.

“Still sore, Lukka.”

“It was a deep wound. It will need time to heal completely.”

He nodded and we both knew what he feared. Some wounds never heal. They fester and spread until the arm has to be lopped off. That would mean Karsh’s death, out here with no surgeon, not even a priest to perform the proper rituals for keeping evil spirits out of his wound.

I went back inside the shadowy barn and nudged the sleeping woman with the toe of my boot. She stirred, groaned, and turned over to stare up at me: naked, dirty, smelling of filth.

“There must be a cache of food hidden somewhere nearby,” I said to her. “Where is it?”

She clutched her rough homespun shift to her and replied sullenly, “Other soldiers took everything before you got here.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Would it still be the truth if we dangled your feet in the fire for a while?” I asked.

Her eyes went wide. “There’s a village not more than half a league down the same road you came in on,” she said quickly. “Many fine houses. More than all the fingers of both my hands!”

Yes, I thought. Fine houses will be guarded by armed men, especially if there are things in them worth stealing.

“Get yourself dressed,” I told her. “But do not come out of the barn until we leave. My men might mistake you for Asertu.”

Her heavy brows knit together, puzzled. “Who is Asertu?”

I had forgotten that we had come so far that these people did not know the Hatti gods. “Aphrodite,” I answered her. The goddess of love and beauty in this part of the world.

She actually smiled, thinking I was complimenting her.

My men were gathered around the cook fire, passing a wooden cup of broth from one to the next. I could smell the reek of stale cabbage from where I stood.

Looking around, I noted, “No one’s on watch.”

“We’re all awake, with our weapons to hand,” Magro said, handing the cup up to me. I took a sip. It was bitter, but at least reasonably hot.

“There’s a village less than a league down the road,” I told them. “Should be food there.”

“Where there’s food, there’s guards,” Zarton muttered. He was the biggest of my men, but never eager to fight.

“Villagers,” I said. “No match for trained Hatti soldiers.”

They mumbled reluctant agreement. My humor had fallen flat again. What was left of my squad hardly resembled a unit of trained Hatti soldiers. They still had their spears and shields, their swords and helmets, true enough, but our clothes had worn out months ago, replaced by what ever ragged, lice-crawling garments we could find among the terrified farmers and villagers we raided.

I had started by trying to trade with the people we came across, but what do soldiers have to trade besides their weapons? Sometimes villagers willingly provided us with what we demanded, just to be rid of us without bloodshed. Farmers usually fled as we approached, leaving their livestock and stores of grain or vegetables to us, glad to escape with their lives and their daughters.

The wench we had found hiding at this farm was lame. She could not run. But her family’s farmstead had already been picked clean by the time we got there. Which meant that there were other bandits in the area.

I formed up the men, reminded them that we might run across another band of raiders.

“But we’re not raiders,” said Magro, grinning mockingly. “We’re Hatti soldiers.”

The others all laughed. Yet I knew that only by keeping the discipline we had all learned under the empire could we hope to survive. It was what had kept us alive so far: twelve of us, at least, out of my original squad of twenty.

I marched them up onto the dusty meandering road, rutted from the wheels of oxcarts and wagons. The road led to the next village, the next fight, the next bloodletting. I told myself that it led to my wife and sons. It was the road that the slavers had taken, the road that ended in the great city at the edge of the sea, where the slave market auctioned off poor wretches to buyers from Thrace and Argos, from distant Crete and even mighty Egypt.

Troy. My wife and sons were being driven to the slave market at Troy. They were still alive, I was certain of it. And I knew that if I did not find them and free them there, I would lose them forever. They would be carried off to some foreign land, slaves for the rest of their lives.

I had to find them. My father had been right in that. In all this world of chaos and misery, my two sons were all that really mattered. I can’t let them spend their lives in slavery. I will find them, no matter how long it takes or who stands in my way.

4

What the wench called a village was a miserable collection of huts at a fork in the road we had been following. Worse, another raider band was already there. Several of the huts were ablaze, sending foul-smelling black smoke billowing into the bright morning sky. Magro and I lay concealed in a stand of half-grown wheat on a terraced hillside overlooking the village. The rest of my men were hunkered down on the other side of the knoll, out of sight.

“They don’t look like soldiers,” Magro whispered to me.

“Neither do we,” I answered.

“Bronze weapons,” Magro pointed out.

I nodded. They were bandits, then, not former soldiers. Only soldiers of the old emperor were gifted with iron swords. Each one was worth a man’s weight in silver.

“Looks like they’re ready to leave,” I whispered.

The bandits must have hit the village the previous day and spent the night, taking their fill of the food and wine and women. Now they had rounded up all the ragged, bedraggled people in the bare little patch of dirt that passed for a village square and methodically, one by one, slit the throats of any man young enough to fight. The women screamed and wailed, the white-bearded old men sank to their knees. The young men, their hands bound behind them, fell like sheep, unable to defend themselves. One of the women threw herself at the raiders but was knocked to the ground by a backhand cuff.

Once their grisly task was finished, the bandits piled as much loot as each of them could carry and staggered out onto the left fork of the road. The women ran to their slain sons and husbands, raking their faces with their nails to add their own blood to what was already soaking the ground.

“What now?” Magro asked me. “They’ve picked the place clean.”

Still watching the backs of the departing bandits, I answered him, “They’ve done half our work for us. Now all we need to do is take the goods they’ve collected away from them.”

“I counted twenty-seven of them.”

I nodded. “Most of them will run at the sight of us.”

“Twenty-seven,” Magro repeated, unconvinced.

It was easy to overtake the bandits. They were still half-drunk and encumbered with the loot they carried. We trailed them to a wooded area, where we could approach them unnoticed, screened by the trees and ground foliage, and fell on them savagely.

In a few moments it was all over. They were fatally surprised. I killed three of the louts myself. Zarton, our big farm boy from the Zagros Mountains, put away five of them—or so he claimed. I counted twenty-two bodies sprawled on the bloody ground. The others fled shrieking for their lives.

“Food, wine, clothing … they did well for themselves,” said little Karsh as we picked over the bundles the bandits had dropped.

“That village was richer than it looked,” Magro said.

“Pick it up, all of it,” I told the men.

“There’s too much! How can we carry all this?” Even Zarton, who towered over most of us, looked unhappy at shouldering such a burden.

“We won’t be carrying it far,” I told them. “We’re bringing it back to the village.”

“Bringing it back?”

“We don’t need all this, and they’ll be very grateful to us for returning even half of it.”

They stared at me in disbelief. Only Magro seemed to understand what I was up to.

“You want to know which fork of the road leads to Troy,” he said to me softly as we trudged back to the village, laden with their goods.

I answered him with a nod. The men were sweating and grumbling, but I had to know which road the slavers had taken. I could not rest while there was still a chance that I might find my sons and my wife.

Would I have come so far if it was only my wife the slavers had taken? I wondered. She was a woman, and there are many women in the world. Yet she was the mother of my sons, and those two little boys were what drove me on. So I sought the fruit of my loins, driven by a dying old man’s will, while my men trudged unhappily back to the village the raiders had looted.

The villagers were indeed grateful, once they realized we intended to return some of their goods to them, rather than cause them more harm. They were a sad and pitiful lot, their young men still sprawled on the blood-soaked earth, their women still kneeling over them, crying and keening. The biting iron stench of their blood filled the air; if the women and old men did not get the corpses buried soon, there would be even worse smells.

The village’s white-bearded headman gladly told me that the right fork led toward Troy, but he had no idea how far the city might be.

“I have heard of it,” he told me, trying to maintain some shred of dignity in his quavering voice. “No one from this village has ever gone there.”

No one from this village has ever gone farther than the wheat fields and dung-spattered sheep pastures of the nearby hills, I thought.

I ordered my men to gather up enough food to feed us for a few days and enough trinkets and baubles to use as trade goods at the next village we came to. The villagers did not object. They could not, even if they desired to.

We left them standing there amid their dead, wailing to their gods.

5

The sun was high and hot as we climbed the wooded slope that led up to the next ridgeline. Suddenly Zarton dropped the loot he was carrying and rested his long spear against a tree.

“I’m going back,” he announced.

The men all stopped. I had been in the lead, so I had to turn around to face our mountain man.

“What do you mean?” I asked, stepping past half a dozen of the men to stand before Zarton.

He shrugged, a big, slow-witted powerful young ox. “I’m going back to that village. I’m not going on with you.”

I glanced at the men closest to me. Some seemed puzzled by Zarton’s words, but a few were nodding with understanding. Why keep on this grueling trek across the ruins of the empire when we can settle down in that village and be welcomed by the widows and daughters who need men to protect them? I saw it in their eyes.

“You are a soldier, Zarton,” I said evenly. “You follow orders just as the rest do. My orders.”

He shook his head stubbornly. “There’s no empire anymore, Lukka. Why keep up the pretense?”

They all knew why. We were fighting our way toward Troy to find my wife and sons. It was my will that drove us on now, not the emperor’s, but I had to be just as hard and inflexible as he had been. Otherwise we would all be lost and I would never find my sons.

“Pick up your goods and get back on the march,” I commanded.

He actually grinned at me. “I’m not a soldier anymore, Lukka. I quit.”

“You can’t quit. Not unless I allow you to.”

Zarton stood up a little straighter. The other men edged away from us.

“I’m going back to the village,” he repeated, slowly, stubbornly.

“No you’re not.”

Usually he was an easygoing, amiable sort. But like the ox he resembled, he could be obstinate. And dangerous. Yet I knew that if I allowed him to leave, several of the other men would go with him. Discipline would evaporate. My squad would disintegrate before my eyes and I would have no chance what ever of reaching distant Troy.

Zarton gripped his spear in one ham-sized fist. It was more than half again his own considerable height. He looked at me with real sadness in his ice-blue eyes.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Lukka. Don’t stand in my way.”

“I don’t want to kill you, boy, but if you don’t obey me I’ll be forced to.”

I had no spear, only the sword in its scabbard by my side. Being left-handed is an advantage in a sword fight because most men are accustomed to fight against right-handers, and my left-handed stance confuses them. But this would not be a sword fight: Zarton hefted his spear.

Before any of the other men could make up their minds about which of us to back, I said loudly: “Stand back, all of you. This is between Zarton and me, no one else.”

They gladly backed away.

“This is wrong, Lukka,” said Zarton, his heavy brows knitting sullenly.

“Don’t make me kill you,” I said evenly. “Put the spear down and obey my orders.”

Shaking his head in disbelief, Zarton closed his other hand around the haft of his spear. But before he could lower its iron point at me I leaped at him, drawing my sword in the same motion.

He staggered back against the tree, shocked, and I stuck the point of my sword into his gut, just below the breastbone, and rammed the full length of the blade up into his chest. He looked surprised, his eyes wide with astonishment that I had not waited for him to set himself. Then his expression faded to a bewildered confusion as his mouth filled with bright red blood and his legs no longer supported him.

With a feeble little gasp Zarton collapsed against the tree’s rough bark and slid to the ground. His eyes stayed open but they went cold and dead.

Yanking my sword from his body, I turned to face the other men. They all seemed just as shocked as Zarton had been.

“We march to Troy. I don’t care how far it is or how many battles we have to fight to get there. We march to Troy. Is that understood?”

They nodded and muttered.

“Troy is a great city. It rules the Dardanelles and the Aegean beyond the straits. We can find a place in the service of the Trojan king,” I told them. “We can become true soldiers again, instead of marauding robbers.”

Perhaps they believed me. Perhaps not. I didn’t care, not at that moment with foolish young Zarton lying dead at my feet with the flies already buzzing about him. I knew only one thing for certain: I would reach Troy or die in the trying. I picked up his spear and pointed with it down the road toward Troy.

We marched.

Yet that night, after a long day’s trek, I saw Zarton again in my dreams. He rose out of the grave I had dug for him and stared at me from the underworld beyond the Styx, shaking his head sadly, sadly, his eyes brimming with tears.

In his arms he held my two baby boys.

6

It was nearly sunset, two days after I had killed Zarton. We were picking our way slowly down a gradual slope, through the undergrowth of a forest that had once been thick with lofty, broad-boled trees. But now half the trees had been cut down, their stumps overgrown with ferns and twisting vines. In the distance we heard the sound of woodcutters chopping away methodically.

That meant a village had to be nearby, or perhaps a larger town. Without a word of command from me, the men spread out, hefting their spears and moving silently through the underbrush, schooled by long experience.

The chunking sound of the axes grew louder as we made our way through the woods. The trees thinned even more, and I motioned the men to drop to their knees. Through the screening underbrush I saw a team of half-naked ax men sweating away at their work in the lengthening shadows of the dying day. Four of them were cutting wood, six more were scurrying to pile the cut logs into a lopsided cart pulled by a big dun-colored bullock patiently munching his cud.

“Move! Move, you dogs!” bellowed a mean-faced taskmaster at the team. His accent was harsh, barely understandable. “You’ve got to get this cart loaded and back in camp before the sun goes down.”

His men were bone-thin, ragged, staggering under the loads they carried.

“And you whoresons!” roared the taskmaster. “Swing those axes or by the gods you’ll think Zeus’ thunderbolts are landing on your backs!”

He brandished a many-thonged whip. He was a big man with powerful bare arms, but a potbelly hung out through his leather vest. Shaved bald, he had a thick bushy beard the color of cinnamon and a livid scar running down one side of his ugly face.

The woodcutters were guarded by five spearmen in leather jerkins studded with bronze bolts. Their spear points were bronze, I saw. Probably the short swords hanging at their sides were, too. Each of them wore little conical helmets that looked, at this distance, to be leather rather than metal.

Off in the hazy horizon the setting sun was tinting the clouds with flaming red. Beyond the edge of the forest and a bare dusty plain that stretched on the other side of a meandering river, I could make out the battlements of a walled city.

Troy!

The city was built on a dark bluff, and beyond it I could see the glittering silver of the sea. It had to be Troy, it could be no other, I told myself. We had reached our destination at last.

Five armed soldiers keeping watch over fewer than a dozen woodcutters. The soldiers looked young, callow. I decided we could afford a peaceful approach.

“On your feet, all of you, and follow me,” I said to my men in a low voice. “That’s Troy there in the distance. We’re almost there.”

Magro huffed with disbelief. “Don’t tell me we’ll sleep under a roof to night.”

I grinned at him as I hefted Zarton’s spear. “Come on.”

The young spearmen stiffened with surprise as we stepped out of the foliage and presented ourselves. They gripped their long bronze-tipped spears and backed away from us a few steps. We were twelve to their five.

The loudmouthed whip master fell silent. The woodcutters stopped their work and gaped at us. They were sweating, filthy, bare to the waist, mostly emaciated old men barely strong enough to lift an ax. They stared about wildly, as if they would break and run at the slightest excuse.

“Is that city Troy?” I asked, pointing with my right hand. I gripped the spear in my left, of course.

“Who are you?” one of the spearmen demanded, his youthful voice cracking with surprise and fear. “What are you doing here?”

I barely understood him. He spoke a dialect that I had never heard before, heavy and guttural. It had been many months since anyone had spoken Hatti to us; we had learned the local language as we trekked across the land.

“We are Hatti soldiers, from far to the east. We seek the city of Troy.”

It took some while, but gradually I made them understand that we meant them no harm. The young spearmen told me that Troy was under siege by a huge army of Achaians, kings and princes of a hundred cities from the far side of the Aegean, or so he claimed. They themselves were part of the besieging Achaian army, sent out to guard this pitiful band of foragers who were gathering firewood. A pretty poor army, I thought.

“You can’t enter the city,” the young leader of the spearmen told me. “The High King Agamemnon would never allow trained warriors to pass through his lines.”

We had arrived in the middle of a war. Where my wife and sons might be was anyone’s guess.

“Then I must see this Agamemnon,” I said.

“See the High King?” the spearman’s voice squeaked with awe.

“Yes, if he is the leader of your army.”

“But he’s the High King! He speaks only to princes and other kings.”

“He will want to speak to me,” I said, with a confidence I did not truly feel. “I am an officer in the army of the Hatti. I can be of great service to him.”

In truth, the spearman was little more than a beardless youth. The thought of going before his High King seemed to fill him with terror. At last he called one of the wood-loaders, a scrawny, knobby-kneed old man with a mangy, unkempt dirty gray beard and bald head shining with sweat.

“Poletes,” the youth commanded, his voice still fluttering slightly, “take these men to the camp and turn them over to the High King’s lieutenant.”

The old man nodded eagerly, glad to be free of his heavy work, and led us down toward the slow-flowing river.

“That’s the plain of Ilios,” said Poletes, pointing to the other side of the river as we followed its winding bank.

His voice was surprisingly strong and deep for such a wizened old gnome. His face was hollow-cheeked beneath its grime, with eyes that bulged like a frog’s. He wore nothing but a filthy rag around his loins. Even in the fading light of the dying day I could see his ribs and the bumps of his spine poking out beneath his nut-brown skin. There were welts from a whip across his back, too.

“You are Hittites?” he asked me as we walked slowly along.

“Yes,” I said. “In our tongue we call ourselves Hatti.”

“The Hittites are a powerful empire,” he said, surprising me with the knowledge. “Have you come to aid Troy? How many of your army are with you?”

I decided it was best to tell him nothing. “Such things I will tell your High King.”

“Ah. Of course. No sense blabbing to a thes.”

That word I did not know. “Where are you from?” I asked.

“Argos. And I wish I were there now, instead of toiling like a dog here in this doomed place.”

“What brought you here?”

He looked up at me and scratched his bald pate. “Not what. Who. Agamemnon’s haughty wife, that’s who. Clytemnestra, who is even more faithless than her sister, Helen.”

It must have been obvious to him that I did not understand, but he went right on, hardly drawing a breath.

“A storyteller am I, and happy I was to spend my days in the agora, spinning tales of gods and heroes and watching the faces of the people as I talked. Especially the children, with their big eyes. But this war has put an end to my storytelling.”

“How so?”

He wiped 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 slaves. Far worse,” Poletes grumbled. He jerked a thumb back toward the men we had left; I could still hear the distant chunking of their axes. “Look at us! Homeless and hopeless. At least a slave has a master to depend upon. A slave belongs to someone; he is a member of a house hold. A thes belongs to no one and nothing; he is landless, homeless, cut off from everything except sorrow and hunger.”

“But weren’t you a member of a house hold in Argos?” I asked.

He bowed his head and squeezed his eyes shut as if to block out a painful memory.

“A house hold, yes,” he said, his voice dropping 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 raised my hand to stop our march. Even though the sun was setting, the day was still broiling hot and the river looked cool and inviting. I sat down on the grassy bank and, leaning far over, scooped up a helmetful of clear water. The men did the same. A few even splashed into the river, laughing and thrashing about like boys.

I drank my fill while Poletes slid down the slippery grass into the water and cupped his hands to drink. Watching the brown filth eddying from his legs, I was glad that I had filled my helmet first.

“Well,” I said, wiping sweat from my brow, “at least the queen’s men didn’t kill you.”

“Better if they had,” Poletes replied grimly. “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 frog’s eyes snapped at me. Still standing shanks-deep in the river, he grabbed at the soiled little purse tied to his waist and opened its mouth enough for me to peer in. A handful of dried lentils.

“My wages,” he said bitterly.

“That is your payment?”

“For the day’s work. Show me a thes with coin in his purse and I’ll show you a sneak thief.”

I shook my head, then got to my feet and motioned my men to do the same.

“Lower than a slave, that’s what I am,” Poletes grumbled as I lent him my arm and hauled him out of the water. “Vermin under their feet. They treat their dogs better. They’ll work me to death and let my bones rot where I fall.”

7

Muttering and complaining all the way, Poletes led us across a ford in the river and toward the camp of the Achaians, which stretched along the sandy shore of the restless sea. It was protected by an earthen rampart twice the height of a grown man running parallel to the shoreline. I saw sharpened stakes planted here and there along its summit. In front of the rampart was a deep ditch, with more stakes studding its bottom. There was a packed sandy rampway that led up to an opening in the rampart, which was protected by a wooden gate that stood wide open, defended by a handful of lounging spearmen. If this is a sample of Acha-ian discipline, I thought, a maniple or two of Hatti soldiers could take this gate and probably the whole camp with it.

We trudged up the ramp and through the open gate, unchallenged by the men who were supposed to be guarding it. Once inside the gate, I saw that what they called a camp looked more like a crowded, bustling noisy village than a military base, and smelled like a barn despite the breeze coming off the sea. People milled about, all of them talking at once, it seemed, at the top of their lungs. There was no hint of military or ganization or discipline among these Achaians.

They had pulled their long, pitch-blackened boats up onto the sandy beach and raised tents and even sizable huts of wood next to them. Between the boats stood roped-off corrals where horses neighed and stamped, and makeshift pens of slatted wood for stinking goats and sheep that bleated and shitted endlessly. Noise and filth were everywhere; the stench almost gagged me at first.

It grew chilly as the sun sank below the flat horizon of the dark blue sea. They have been here for some time, I realized, as we made our way through the confused jumble of the camp. Men were gathering around cook fires; pale smoke wafted away on the wind. Dirty-faced slave women in rags stirred big pots of bronze while men sat close by, cleaning weapons, binding fresh wounds, jabbing daggers into the pots to yank out steaming half-cooked chunks of meat. The noise of men shouting back and forth and beasts yowling was enough to make my head hurt; the stench of dung and animals and smoke hung in the air like a palpable cloud.

There were plenty of women in the camp: slaves tending their masters’ cook fires, carrying heavy double-handled jugs of wine on their shoulders, polishing armor with the resigned, hopeless patience that slavery teaches.

As instructed, Poletes marched us to the camp of Agamemnon, High King among the Achaians. The old man pointed out the two dozen boats that Agamemnon had brought to Troy, all pulled far up on the sandy beach, side by side, each decorated with a golden lion painted on its prow. Agamemnon’s quarters was the largest wooden lodge I had yet seen, its main door guarded by no less than six armed warriors in shining bronze armor and helmets.

Poletes spoke to one of the guards, who walked off into the lengthening shadows of the noisy, busy camp.

“How long has this war been going on?” I asked Poletes.

Clutching his thin arms over his bare chest to try to ward off the growing cold, Poletes told me, “For years, now. Of course, much of that time has been spent raiding the villages and farms nearby. It took awhile for these mighty warriors to work up the courage to attack Troy itself.”

“The slave market …” I started to say.

But Poletes ignored me as he continued, “The city’s walls were built by Poseidon and Apollo, they say. No one can breach them. Yet Agamemnon and the other kings are determined to continue their siege until—”

“You there!” a haughty voice stopped Poletes as if his tongue had been ripped out.

I turned and saw a sour-faced man approaching us, with the guard Poletes had spoken to trailing a few paces behind him. The man wore no armor, but his straight back and sharp tone told me he was accustomed to giving orders. Even in a rough wool chiton he looked like a soldier.

Ignoring Poletes, he marched straight up to me, looked me up and down, then cast a baleful glance at my men.

“I am Thersandros, captain of the High King’s guards. Who are you and what do you want?” he demanded of me.

My men snapped to attention, spears erect. I, too, straightened the spear in my hand and answered, “I am Lukka, commander of this squad of Hatti troops. I want to offer my services to your king.”

The corner of his mouth ticked once. I could see there was gray in his thick beard and shaggy hair.

“Offer your services to the king, eh? More likely you’re looking for a free meal.”

“We are trained Hatti soldiers,” I said evenly. “We can be of great help to your king.”

He planted his fists on his hips. “A dozen more mouths to feed, that’s all I see here.”

I drew myself up to my full height, several fingers taller than he. “Are you going to announce our presence to your High King or not?”

He tried to outstare me, but soon blinked and looked away. “To the High King? You must be mad. I’ll tell his chief steward, he’s the one who’s always sending boats back to Argos for more warriors.”

“Fair enough,” I said, deciding to accept his decision.

“You, thes,” he growled at Poletes. “Get back to the work gang, where you belong.”

Poletes turned to me, his big frog’s eyes silently begging, like a sorrowful puppy.

“He’s with me,” I heard myself say, even as I thought it was foolish to be so softhearted. A Hatti soldier should be made of sterner stuff.

“Him?” Thersandros guffawed. “He’s nothing but a worthless thes.”

“He’s my servant,” I said evenly.

“You can’t—”

“He’s my servant,” I repeated, with more iron in it.

Thersandros shrugged and muttered, “Suit yourself, then. Find yourselves a fire for the night. Over there will do.” He pointed to a handful of men sprawled around one of the cook fires. “Tell them Thersandros said they should share what they can with you.”

I tried to hold back the anger that rose in me. Sending a pack of strangers to soldiers already huddling by their evening fire and ordering them to “share what they can” is an excellent way to start a fight.

Yet even as I stood before Thersandros, struggling to keep my temper, my eye chanced on the line of women who were carrying food and drink into Agamemnon’s cabin.

They were slaves, I knew. Most of them were young and slim, some were even pretty.

The third one in the line was my wife.

8

I started to call out to her, but she disappeared into the cabin before I could gather my wits and utter a sound. I started toward the lodge, but Thersandros grabbed my arm.

“You can’t go in there!” he snapped, frowning at me. “That’s the High King’s quarters.”

“That woman is my wife,” I said.

His frown changed into a look of sheer disbelief. “Those are slaves, Hittite. The High King’s slaves, at that.”

I pulled free of his grip. “She’s my wife,” I insisted.

Thersandros pointed to the guards in polished bronze armor standing on either side of the hut’s doorway. “They’ll spit you on your spears if you try to go in there.”

“Then you go in and bring her out to me.”

“Me?” He broke into a bitter, barking laugh. “The High King doesn’t give up his slaves, Hittite. Not to me and certainly not to the likes of you.”

He dragged me away from the cabin, back toward my men. “I’ll ask about her for you,” he said, grudgingly. “Don’t expect a miracle.”

My blood was hot. I gripped the pummel of my sword, thinking that I could slice this Thersandros’ liver out of him before he knew what hit him. Then, with my squad of men, I could break past those guards and take my wife out of Agamemnon’s lodge, out of slavery.

And then what? I asked myself. Twelve men against the whole Achaian camp? Madness. And where were my sons? What would happen to them if I started a brawl here in the camp? How could I save them, protect them, if I were killed battling like a hotheaded fool?

So I forced myself to remain silent, to walk slowly away from Thersandros and back toward my waiting men, seething with rage, trembling with the effort to control myself.

Aniti is alive, I told myself. A slave, but still alive. Where are my sons? I wondered. A bitter voice in my mind answered. Already dead, most likely. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to silence that voice.

Poletes broke my train of thoughts. Pointing to the Achaians gathering around their fire, he said, “Let’s get something to eat before everything’s gone. My stomach is as shriveled as a dried prune.”

As boldly as a free man he walked up to the knobby-kneed Achaian standing by the cook pot and said loudly, “Thersandros says that you must share what you have with these men.”

The Achaian didn’t hesitate an instant. He cuffed Poletes with a backhand swat that sent the old storyteller sprawling.

I stepped up to him, Zarton’s spear still in my hand. “This man is my servant. What you do to him you do to me.”

With my free hand I hauled Poletes to his feet. His lip was cracked and bleeding.

The Achaian eyed me up and down, took note of my spear and the sword at my hip, the shield strapped to my back, my travel-stained leather jerkin and iron helmet. He wore only a ragged wool chiton, belted at the waist. His hair and beard were dark and thickly curled, matted with sweat and grime. His bare arms and legs were lean but wiry, roped with muscle.

“And who in the name of Hades are you?” His voice was low, gruff.

The men who had been eating out of wooden bowls were looking up at us. Several of them got slowly to their feet. I knew my own men were drawing themselves up behind me.

“I am Lukka, of the Hatti. Hittites, in your tongue. I’ve offered the services of my men to your High King.”

The man blinked several times. He’s trying to find a way to deal with us without humiliating himself, I reasoned. He doesn’t want a fight, and neither do I.

“I can pay for what ever food you provide,” I said.

“Pay?”

I held out the spear. “Take it. Its point is made of iron, far stronger than your bronze spearpoints.”

He hesitated. “Bronze holds a sharper edge.”

“And shatters where an iron point holds strong.” With a nod, he took the spear from my hand. He hefted it, then allowed a slow smile to creep across his bearded face.

“Hittites, eh? You’ve come a long way, then.”

“We have,” I said, making myself smile back at him. “And we’re hungry.”

He nodded and turned to the stolid, thickset wench stirring the pot. With a kick to her rump he barked, “Find more meat for the stew! We have hungry mouths to feed.”

It turned out that he was not a difficult man, after all. His name was Oetylos, and like the rest of the High King’s men he was from Argos.

“Agamemnon is a mighty king,” he said over his wooden bowl as we sat together. “Who else could have brought all these kings and princes together to bring Helen back to her rightful husband?”

I ate the hot, spicy stew slowly and let him talk. I needed to know more about this Agamemnon. I needed to know how I could get this mighty king to release my wife from slavery. And my sons, if they still lived.

9

I woke with the sun. A chill wind swept in from the sea as the first rays of light peeped over the high wall of the city, up on the bluff. My men, who had been sleeping on the ground wrapped in their cloaks as I had, stirred and began to sit up, coughing and complaining, as usual. Looking around for Poletes, I saw him huddled with several of the dogs, scratching fleas as he still slept.

Silent, sad-faced women brought us wooden cups and filled them with a thin barley gruel. My wife was not among them. We sat in a circle and sipped at our breakfast while the Achaian camp slowly came astir. Poletes joined us, grateful to be given a steaming bowl.

Then Thersandros came striding among us, fists on his hips. “Hittite!” he called to me.

I got to my feet. There was little sense of discipline that I could see. Instead of saluting him I merely walked over and stood three paces before his wary eyes.

“Do Hittite warriors know how to dig?” he asked me, almost in a growl.

“All soldiers learn to use a shovel,” I replied. “My men have built—”

He cut me off with a curt gesture. Pointing to the top of the earthen rampart that protected the camp, he said, “Then take your men up there and do what you can to strengthen the wall.”

I wanted to tell him that he would be wasting our abilities; we were soldiers, not laborers. Instead I said, “How soon can I see your High King? I want to offer—”

“Offer your backs to the shovels,” Thersandros said. “My lord Agamemnon has other things on his mind this morning.”

With that he turned and walked away from me.

A soldier learns to obey orders or he doesn’t remain a soldier for long. I decided there was nothing I could do but bide my time.

My men were on their feet by now. Walking back to them, I told them that our task this fine, breezy morning was an engineering detail.

Magro saw through my words immediately. “They want us to dig for them?”

I nodded and smiled grimly.

Oetylos had shovels waiting for us. Grousing and frowning, my men took the tools and started trudging up the slope of the rampart.

“You, too, storyteller,” Oetylos said to Poletes, and he threw the old man a filth-encrusted burlap sack: for carrying sand, I surmised.

We were not the only ones plodding up the rampart. Work gangs of slaves and thetes were also heading for the top, shovels on their shoulders, with whip-brandishing overseers behind them. At least we had no taskmaster to shout at us.

The rampart stretched along the length of the beach, protecting the camp and the boats pulled up onto the sand. I could see only one opening in the sandy wall, protected by a ramshackle wooden gate and guarded by half a dozen lounging spearmen. In front of the rampart was a broad ditch, studded with wooden spikes, as was the top of the fortification itself.

Once at the top of the rampart we had a fine view of the plain and the city of Troy up on the bluff. Its walls were crenellated, its gates tightly shut. Inside the Achaian camp warriors were eating a breakfast of broiled mutton and thick flat bread, while their slaves and men-at-arms yoked horses to chariots and sharpened swords and spears.

“They’re going to attack the city,” I surmised aloud.

Poletes answered in his surprisingly strong voice, “They will do battle on the plain. The Trojans will come out this day to fight.”

“Why should they come out from behind those walls?” I wondered.

Poletes shrugged his skinny shoulders. “It has been arranged by the heralds. Agamemnon offered battle and white-bearded Priam accepted. The princes of Troy will ride out in their fine chariots to fight the kings of the Achaians.”

That didn’t make much sense to me, and I wondered if the storyteller was trying to make up a dramatic scene out of whole cloth.

As the sun rose higher in the sparkling clear sky we worked at improving the rampart. I immediately saw that the best thing to do was dig sand out of the bottom of the ditch that fronted the defensive wall and carry it up to the top. That way the ditch got deeper and the rampart grew higher. It was hot work, and my men sweated almost as much as they grumbled and swore about their work.

I dug and sweated alongside them. I assigned Poletes to stay at the summit, watching over our weapons and shields and jerkins, which we had left there. We worked in our skirts, bare to the waist.

The morning was quite beautiful. Up at the top of the rampart the cool breeze from the sea felt good on my sweaty skin. The sky was a wondrously clear bowl of sparkling blue, dotted by screeching white gulls that soared above us. The sea was a much deeper blue where restless surges of white-foamed waves danced endlessly. Grayish brown humps of islands rose along the distant horizon. In the other direction Troy’s towers seemed to glower darkly at us from across the plain. The distant hills behind the city were dark with trees, and beyond them rose hazy bluish mountains, wavering in the heat.

Slaves and thetes of the other digging crews scrambled up the slope lugging woven baskets filled with sand.

I saw that Poletes had wandered off a ways to talk with some of the others, his skinny arms waving animatedly, his eyes big and round. At length he returned to our cache of weapons and clothes and beckoned to me.

“All is not well among the high and mighty this morning,” he halfwhispered to me, grinning with delight. “There’s some argument between my lord Agamemnon and Achilles, the great slayer of men. They say that Achilles will not leave his lodge 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.

My men and I toiled like laborers while the sun climbed higher in the cloudless sky. Agamemnon and the other Achaian leaders must be very fearful of the Trojans, I thought, to put us to work on improving their defensive barricade.

Then a handful of thetes began pushing on the wooden gate. It creaked and groaned as they pushed it slowly, slowly open. The chariots began to stream out onto the plain, the horses’ hooves thudding on the packedearth ramp that cut across the trench running in front of the rampart. All work stopped. The men still down in the trench scrambled up to the top of the rampart so they could watch the impending battle.

10

Bronze armor glittered in the sun as the chariots clattered through the gate and 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. I counted seventy-nine chariots, a pitifully small number compared to the assemblages of the army of the Hatti.

I myself had seen more than a thousand chariots assembled before the walls of Babylon. My grandfather claimed there were ten thousand at the battle of Megiddo.

Each of the Achaian chariots bore two men, one handling the horses, the other armed with several spears of different weights and lengths. The longest were more than twice the height of a warrior, even in his bronze helmet with its plume of brightly dyed horse hair.

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 of the chariot drivers carried small round targes strapped to their left forearms. Each of the warriors held a heavy hourglass-shaped shield that was nearly as tall as he was, covering him from chin to ankles. I caught the glitter of gold and silver on the hilts of their swords. Many of the charioteers had bows slung across their backs or hooked against the chariot rail.

A huge shout went up as the last chariot passed through the gate and down the heavily trodden rampway that crossed the trench. The four horses pulling it were magnificent matched blacks, glossy and sleek. The warrior standing 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 over on the left is Great Ajax,” he pointed, excited despite himself. “There’s Odysseos, and—”

An echoing roar reached us from the battlements of Troy. A cloud of dust showed that a contingent of chariots was filing out of the large gate on the right side of the city’s wall and winding its way down the incline that led to the plain before us.

Foot soldiers were hurrying out of our makeshift gate now, menatarms bearing bows, slings, axes, cudgels. Down the ramp of packed sand they hurried and spread out behind the line of Achaian chariots. A few of them wore armor or chain mail, but most of them had nothing more protective than leather vests, some studded with bronze pieces. Squinting into the bright sunshine, I saw that Trojan footmen were lining up behind their chariots. None of the troops marched in order, on either side; they simply ambled out like a horde of undisciplined rabble.

The two armies assembled themselves facing each other on the windswept plain. It grew strangely quiet. The clouds of dust the chariots had raised eddied away on the breeze coming from the sea. The river we had forded the day before formed a natural boundary to the battlefield on our right, while a smaller meandering stream defined the left flank. Beyond their far banks the ground on both sides was green with tussocks of long-bladed grass, but the battlefield itself had been worn bare by chariot wheels and the tramping of horses and warriors.

For nearly the time it took to eat a meal, nothing much happened. The armies stood facing each other. The sun climbed higher in the nearly cloudless sky. Horses whinnied nervously. Heralds went out from each side and spoke with each other while the wind gusted in our ears.

“None of the heroes are challenging each other to single combat this day,” explained Poletes. “The heralds are exchanging offers of peace, which each side will disdainfully refuse.”

“They do this every day?”

He nodded. “Unless it rains.”

A question popped into my mind. “Why are they fighting? What’s the reason for this war?”

Poletes turned his wizened face to me. “Ah, Hittite, that is a good question. They say they are fighting over Helen, the wife of Menalaos, and it’s true that Prince Paris abducted her from Sparta while her husband’s back was turned. Whether she came with him willingly or not, only the gods know.”

“Who is Prince Paris?”

“King Priam’s youn gest son. Sometimes he is called Alexandros.” Poletes broke into a chuckle. “A few days ago Menalaos, the lawful husband of Helen, challenged him to single combat, but Paris ran away. He hid behind his foot soldiers! Can you believe that?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I remained silent.

“Menalaos is King of Sparta and Agamemnon’s brother,” Poletes went on, his voice dropping lower, as if he did not want the others to overhear. “The High King would love to smash Troy flat. That would give him clear sailing through the Dardanelles into the Sea of Black Waters.”

“Is that important?”

“Gold, my boy,” Poletes whispered. “Not merely the yellow metal that kings adorn themselves with, but the golden grain that grows by the far shores of that sea. A land awash in grain. But no one can pass through the straits and get at it unless they pay a tribute to Troy.”

I was beginning to understand the reason behind this war.

“Paris 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 ended up abducting the beautiful Helen instead. That was all the excuse Agamemnon needed. If he can conquer Troy he can have free access to the riches of the lands beyond the Dardanelles.”

“Why don’t the Trojans simply return Helen to her rightful husband? That would put an end to this war, wouldn’t it?”

Poletes smiled knowingly. “It would indeed. But you have not seen the golden-haired Helen.”

“Have you?”

He shook his head sadly. “No. But everyone who has agrees that she is the most beautiful woman in the world. Aphrodite’s child, they claim.”

“No woman could be so important that men would fight a war over her.” But I remembered that the night before I was almost willing to attack Agamemnon’s lodge to seize my wife and sons. Almost.

“Perhaps so, Hittite,” said Poletes. “Helen is merely an excuse for Agamemnon’s greed. But the Trojans won’t give her up and here we are.”

A series of bugle blasts erupted on the plain before us.

“Now it begins,” Poletes said, suddenly grim, hard-eyed. “Now the fools rush to the slaughter once again.”

11

Standing beside Poletes atop the rampart I watched as the charioteers cracked their whips and the horses bolted forward, carrying Achaians and Trojans eagerly toward each other.

I focused my attention 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 on his left arm and with his free hand plucked one of the lighter, shorter spears from the handful rattling in their holder.

“Diomedes,” said Poletes, before I asked. “Prince of Argos. A fine young man.”

Shrieks and screams filled the air as each warrior shouted out his battle cry. The horses pounded madly across the field, eyes bulging, nostrils wide.

The chariot approaching Diomedes swerved suddenly and the warrior in it hurled his spear. It sailed harmlessly past the prince of Argos. 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 far off stride that the chariot slewed wildly, tumbling the warrior onto the dusty ground. The charioteer ducked behind the chariot’s siding.

Other combats were turning the worn-bare battlefield into a vast cloud of dust, with 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.

I could see no order to the battle, no judgment or tactics. The nobles in their chariots merely rushed into single combat against the enemy’s chariot-riding noblemen. No formations of chariots, no organized plan of attack, nothing but chaos.

One voice pierced all the others, a weird screaming cry like a seagull gone mad with frenzy.

“The battle cry of Odysseos,” Poletes said. “You can always hear the King of Ithaca above all the others.”

I was still concentrating on Diomedes, eager to learn how these Achaians fought their battles. As his opponent sprawled in the dust, his charioteer reined in his team and Diomedes hopped down to the ground, two spears gripped in his left hand, his massive figure-eight shield bumping against his helmet and greaves.

“A lesser man would have speared his foe from the chariot,” said Poletes 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 while drawing his long sword from its sheath. 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 and shields, rushed to each other, and embraced like a pair 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 house hold sometime in the past.”

“But the battle …”

Poletes shook his gray head. “What has that to do with it? There are plenty of others to kill.”

The two warriors exchanged swords, then each got back onto his chariot and they drove in opposite directions.

“No wonder this war has lasted for years,” I muttered.

But although Diomedes’ first encounter of the day ended nonviolently, that was the only bit of peace that I saw amid the carnage of battle. Chariots hurtled at each other, spearmen driving their long weapons into the entrails of their opponents. The bronze spear points were themselves the length of a grown man’s arm. When all the power generated by a team of galloping horses was focused on the gleaming tip of a sharp spear point, nothing could stand in its way, not even many-layered shields of oxhide. Armored men were lifted off their feet, out of their chariots, when those spears hit them. Bronze armor was no protection against that tremendous force.

The noble warriors preferred to fight from their chariots, I saw, although here and there men had alighted and faced their opponents on the ground. Still the foot soldiers held back, skulking and squinting in the swirling clouds of dust, content to let the noblemen face 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 they could never face an armed 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 spurted 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 cackled. “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 still standing turned and ran. Then his men resumed stripping the corpse while the nobleman stood guard over them, as effectively out of the battle for the time being as if he himself had been slain.

Many of the chariots were overturned or empty of their warriors by now. Armored men were fighting on foot with long spears or swords. I saw one nobleman pick up rocks 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 footmen. 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 the 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 but a few minutes. There was no order to the battle, no plan, no tactics. It was nothing more than a huge, jumbled melee. 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 rage.

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 around to get away from two other 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 tried 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. I coughed and blinked grit from my eyes. Then I heard a fresh trumpet blare and the roar of many men shouting in unison. The thunder of horses’ hooves shook the ground.

Through the dust came three dozen chariots heading straight for the place where we stood atop the earthworks rampart.

“Prince Hector!” shouted Poletes, his voice brittle with awe. “See how he slices through the Achaians!”

Here was a man who understood battle tactics, I realized. Prince 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 the wedge of a spear point through the shocked Achaians, slaughtering left and right. Hector’s massive long spear was stained with blood halfway up its wooden shaft. He carried it lightly as a wand, spitting armored noblemen and leather-clad foot soldiers alike, driving relentlessly toward the rampart that protected the beach, the camp, the boats.

For a few minutes the Achaians tried to fight back, but when Hector’s chariot broke past the ragged line of their chariots and headed straight for the gate at 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 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 gold-inlaid armor was coated with dust. An arrow protruded from his right shoulder and blood streaked his arm.

“We’re doomed!” he shrieked in a high girlish voice. “We’re doomed!”

12

The Achaians were racing for the safety of the rampart with the Trojan chariots in hot pursuit, closely followed by the Trojan footmen running pell-mell, brandishing swords and axes. Here and there a Trojan would stop for a moment to sling a stone at the fleeing Achaians or drop to one knee to fire an arrow.

An arrow whizzed past me. Poletes ducked behind me for protection. I turned and saw my men edging back to where they had laid their spears and shields. We were alone along the length of the rampart’s top now; the slaves and thetes had already fled down into the camp. Even the overseer with his whip had vanished.

A noisy struggle was taking place at the gate. It was a ramshackle affair, made of warped planks taken from some of the boats. It was not a hinged door but simply a wooden barricade that could be wedged into the opening in the earthworks. Some men were frantically trying to put the gate in place while others were struggling to hold them back and keep it open until the remainder of the fleeing Achaian chariots could wheel through. I saw that Hector and his chariots would reach the gate in a few moments. Once past it, I knew, the Trojans would slaughter everyone in the camp.

“Stay here,” I said to Poletes, then called to my men, “Follow me!”

Without waiting to see if they obeyed me I dodged among the lopsided stakes planted along the rampart’s crest, heading toward the gate. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a javelin hurtling toward me. It thudded into the ground at my feet; I stopped long enough to wrest it out of the ground, then started toward the gate again. Magro, Karsh and the others were a few paces behind me, spears in their hands, shields on their arms.

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, where the panicked Achaians were still struggling over their makeshift gate.

I landed directly in front of Hector’s charging horses, naked to the waist, without shield or helmet. I yelled and, gripping the light javelin in both hands, pointed it at the horses’ eyes. Startled, they reared up, neighing.

For an instant the world stopped, frozen as if in a painting on a vase. Behind me the Achaians were straining to put up the barricade that would keep the Trojans from invading their camp. Before me Hector’s team of four nut-brown horses reared high, the unshod hooves of their forelegs almost in my face. I stood crouched slightly, the javelin in both my hands, pointed at the horses.

The horses shied away from me, their eyes bulging white with fear, twisting the chariot sideways along the pounded-earth ramp. I saw the warrior in the chariot standing tall and straight, one hand on the rail, the other raised above his head, holding a monstrously long blood-soaked spear.

Aimed at my chest.

He was close enough so that I could see his face clearly, even with his helmet’s cheek flaps tied tightly under his bearded chin. I looked into the eyes of Hector, prince of Troy. Brown eyes they were, the color of rich farm soil, calm and deep. No anger, no battle lust. He was a cool and calculating warrior, a thinker among these hordes of wild, screaming brutes. 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, a strangely peaceful emblem in the midst of all this mayhem and gore.

My men were jumping to the ramp now, shields before them and spears making a small hedgehog of points. Just as Hector cocked his arm to hurl his spear at me, an arrow from behind us caught his charioteer in the throat. Suddenly uncontrolled, the horses panicked and stumbled over each other on the narrow ramp. One of them started sliding along the steep edge of the trench. Whinnying with fear they backed and turned, tumbling the dead charioteer and Prince Hector both onto the sandy ground. Then they bolted off back down the ramp and toward the distant city, dragging the empty chariot with them.

Hector scrambled to his feet, his massive spear still in his hand. More Trojans were rushing up the ramp on foot, their chariots useless because Hector’s panicked team had scattered the other teams.

I glanced over my shoulder. My men had formed a solid line behind me, their spears forward. I stepped back and took my usual place on the right end of the line. I had no shield, but still I took my accustomed place.

The barricade was up now and Achaian archers were firing through the slits between its planks while others stood atop the rampart, hurling stones and spears. Hector held up his little shield against the missiles and backed away. A few Trojan arrows came our way but did no hurt.

The Trojans retreated, but only beyond the distance of a bowshot. There Hector told them to stand their ground.

The morning’s battle was ended. The Achaians were penned in their camp behind the trench and rampart, with the sea at their backs. The Trojans held the corpse-strewn plain.

Panting from exertion, sweat streaming down my bare torso, I banged my fist on the flimsy wooden gate and a trio of grimy-faced youths opened it far enough for me and my men to slip through.

Poletes ran up to me. “Hittite, you must be a son of Ares! A mighty warrior to face Prince Hector!”

I said nothing, but glanced back at the plain, where Trojans were already dragging away their dead. How many of the proud lords on both sides of this war 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.

13

Others came up and joined Poletes’ praise as my men and I stood just inside the gate in the hot noontide sun. They surrounded us, clapping our backs and shoulders, smiling, shouting. Someone offered us wooden bowls of wine.

“You saved the camp!”

“You stopped those horses as if you were Poseidon himself!”

Even the crusty, hard-eyed overseer looked on me fondly. “That was not the action of a thes,” he said, eyeing me carefully. “Why are warriors working as laborers?”

I replied grimly, “Ask your High King.”

They edged away from us. Their smiles turned to worried glances. Only the overseer had courage enough to stand his ground and say, “Well, the High King should be pleased with you this day. And the gods, too.”

Poletes stepped to my side. “Come, Hittite. I’ll find you a good fire and hot food.”

I let the old storyteller lead us away from the gate, deeper into the camp, while we pulled on our shirts and leather jerkins.

“I knew you were no ordinary men,” he said as we made our way through the scattered huts and tents. “Not someone with your bearing. This must be a nobleman, I told myself. A nobleman, at the very least.”

“Only a soldier of the Hatti,” I replied.

“Pah! Don’t be so modest.” Poletes chattered and yammered, telling me how my deeds looked to his eyes, reciting the day’s carnage as if he was 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 us. Some were bold enough to come up to us and offer freshly broiled meats and onions on skewers.

Poletes shooed the women 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.”

I smiled inwardly and wondered how much my men appreciated Poletes’ “protection.”

To me, the old storyteller said, “Women cause all the trouble in the world. Be careful of them.”

“Are these women slaves or thetes?” I asked him.

“There are no women thetes, Hittite. It’s unheard of! A woman, working for wages? Unheard of!”

“Not even prostitutes?”

“Ah! Yes, of course. But that’s a different matter. And in the cities there are temple prostitutes, protected by Aphrodite. But they are not thetes. It’s not the same thing at all.”

“Then the women here in camp …”

“Slaves. Captives. Daughters and wives of slain enemies, captured in the sack of towns and farms.”

My wife was a slave of the High King’s. How can I get her away from him? I asked myself. Are my sons alive? Where are they?

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 of blue and white stripes had been draped to form a tent. A helmeted guard stood on the deck before it, with a well-groomed dog by his side. I stared at the carved and painted figurehead on the boat’s prow, a grinning dolphin’s face against a deep blue background.

“The camp of Odysseos,” Poletes explained to me 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, Hittite,” Poletes instructed me, surprised that neither I nor my men knew the custom.

The men around the fire praised me for my daring 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-up and even Zeus himself was mentioned now and then. They soon fell to arguing passionately among themselves without bothering to ask me or my men about it.

I was happy to let them quarrel. I listened, and as they argued I learned much about this war.

They had been campaigning in the region each summer for many years. Achilles, Menalaos, Agamemnon and the other warrior kings had been ravaging the coastal lands, burning towns and taking captives, until finally they had worked up the courage—and the forces—to besiege Troy itself.

But without Achilles, their fiercest fighter, the men thought their prospects were dim. Apparently Agamemnon had awarded Achilles a young woman captive and then had changed his mind and taken her for himself. This insult was more than the haughty young Achilles could endure, even from the High King.

“The joke of it all,” said one of the men, tossing a well-gnawed lamb joint to the dogs hovering beyond our circle, “is that Achilles prefers his friend Patrokles to any woman.”

They all nodded and muttered 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 Mount Ida,” said Poletes.

One of the foot soldiers, his leather jacket 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,” one of the others agreed.

Sure enough, within minutes it began pelting down. We scattered for what ever shelter we could find. Poletes and I hunkered down in the lee of Odysseos’ boat. Through the driving rain I saw my men scurrying for the shelter of the tents scattered around Odysseos’ boats.

“Now the great lords will arrange a truce, so that the women and slaves can go out and recover the bodies of our dead. To night their bodies will be burned and a barrow raised over their charred 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 frothing 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 sit like dumb animals and wait for the sun to return.

I crouched as close as I could to the boat’s hull, smelling the sharp tang of the pitch they had smeared over the planks to keep the vessel watertight. My wife is among the slaves in Agamemnon’s camp, I knew. Are my sons with her? Are they still living?

Suddenly I realized that 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 pelt draped over his head and shoulders, dripping with the pounding rain. Knee-length tunic, a short sword buckled at his hip. Shins and calves muddied. Ham-sized fists planted on his hips.

“You’re the Hittite?” he shouted over the driving rain.

I got to my feet and saw that I stood several fingers taller than he. Still, he did not look like a man to be taken lightly.

“I am Lukka,” I replied. “My men are—”

“Come with me,” he snapped, and started to turn away.

“To where?”

Over his shoulder he answered, “My lord Odysseos wants to see what kind of man could stop Prince Hector in his tracks. Now move!”

Poletes scrambled up and pranced happily in the mud beside me around the prow of the boat, through the soaking rain, to a rope ladder that led up to the deck.

“I knew Odysseos was the only one here wise enough to make use of you,” he cackled. “I knew it!”

14

It was slippery going, clambering up the rope ladder in the wind-whipped rain. I feared that Poletes would fall. But, following Odysseos’ man, we made it to the boat’s deck and ducked under the striped canvas. The Ithacan opened a wooden chest and tossed a pair of large rags at us.

“Dry yourselves,” he said curtly. We did, gladly, as he shucked the dripping wolf’s pelt he’d been wearing and slung it to the deck with a wet slapping sound.

I threw my towel next to his sodden pelt. Poletes did the same. For long moments we stood there while the Ithacan looked us up and down.

“Presentable enough,” he muttered, more to himself than to us. Then he said, “Follow me.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance as we walked behind him around a wooden cabin. And there sat Odysseos, King of Ithaca.

He was sitting behind a bare trestle table, flanked on either side by two standing noblemen in fine woolen cloaks. He did not appear to be a very tall man; what I could see of legs seemed stumpy, though heavily muscled. His chest was broad and deep. Later I learned that he swam in the sea almost every morning. His thick strong arms were circled with 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. Puckered 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, which bellied and flapped in the wind scant finger widths above my head. The tent smelled of dogs, musty and damp. And cold. I felt chilled and Poletes, with nothing but his ragged loincloth, hugged his shivering body with his bare arms.

Odysseos wore a sleeveless tunic, his legs and feet bare, but he had thrown a lamb’s fleece across his wide shoulders. His face was thickly bearded with dark curly hair that showed a trace of gray. 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.

“You are a Hittite?” were his first words to me.

“I am, my lord.”

“Why have Hittites come to Troy?”

I hesitated, trying to decide how much of the truth I should speak to him. Swiftly I realized that it had to be either everything or nothing.

“I seek my wife and two young sons who have been taken captive, my lord.”

He rocked back on his stool at that. Clearly it was not an answer he had expected.

“Your wife and sons?”

“My wife is among the High King’s slaves,” I added. “If my sons live, they must be with her.”

Odysseos glanced up at the nobleman standing on his left, whose hair and long beard were dead white. His limbs seemed withered to bones and tendons, his face a skull mask. He had wrapped a blue cloak around his chiton, clasped at the throat with a medallion of gold. Both noblemen appeared weary and drained by the morning’s battle although neither of them bore fresh wounds as Odysseos did.

The King of Ithaca returned his attention to me. “Who is he?” he asked, pointing to Poletes.

“My servant,” I answered.

Odysseos nodded, accepting the storyteller. Lightning flashed and he looked up, waiting for the thunder. When it came at last he muttered, “The storm moves away.”

Indeed, the rain seemed to be slacking off. Its pelting on the canvas of the tent was noticeably lighter.

At last Odysseos said, “You did us a great service this morning. Such service should be rewarded.”

The frail old whitebeard at his left spoke in an abrasive nasal voice, “You fought this morning like a warrior born and bred. Facing Prince Hector by yourself! Half naked, too! 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—”

Odysseos raised his right hand. “Please, Nestor, I pray you forgo your reminiscences for the moment.”

The old man looked displeased but sank back in silence.

“You say you seek your wife and sons,” Odysseos resumed. “Then you are not here as a representative of your emperor?”

Again I hesitated. And again I decided there was nothing to tell him but the truth.

“There is no emperor, my lord. The lands of the Hatti are torn with civil war. The empire has crumbled.”

Their jaws dropped open. Odysseos swiftly recovered, but he could not hide the smile that crossed his face.

Nestor blurted, “Then the Hittites are not sending troops to aid the Trojans?”

“No, my lord.”

“You came here by yourself ?” Odysseos asked.

“With the eleven men of my squad.” Poletes coughed beside me, and I added, “And my servant.”

Rubbing his beard with one hand, his eyes going crafty, Odysseos murmured, “Then Troy can expect no help from the Hittites.”

Nestor and the other nobleman broke into happy smiles. “This is indeed good news,” said Nestor. “Wonderful news!”

Odysseos nodded, then said, “But it doesn’t change the situation we face. Hector is camped on the plain outside our rampart. Tomorrow he will try to break through and drive us into the sea.”

That sobered the other two.

He looked up at me again. “We owe you a reward. What would you have?”

Immediately I replied, “My wife and sons.”

“You say they are among Agamemnon’s slaves.”

“I saw my wife there, yes, my lord.”

Odysseos breathed out a sigh. “Slaves are the property of he who owns them.”

“They are my sons,” I said firmly. “Little more than babies. And she is my lawful wife.”

He rubbed at his beard again. “The High King is touchy these days about giving up his slaves. He’s in the midst of a dispute with young Achilles about a slave woman.”

“That’s none of my affair, my lord.”

“No, it isn’t. But still …” He glanced up at Nestor again, who remained stone silent now. For long moments Odysseos sat there, saying nothing. It appeared to me that he was thinking, planning. At last he got to his feet and stepped around the table to clasp me on the shoulder.

“What is your name, Hittite?”

“I am called Lukka, my lord.”

“Very well, Lukka,” he said. “I will speak to Agamemnon—when the time is right. Meanwhile, welcome into the house hold of the King of Ithaca. You and your men.” Poletes shuffled his feet slightly. “And your servant,” Odysseos added.

I was not certain of what I should do until I saw Nestor frowning slightly and prompting me by motioning with both hands, palms down. I knelt on one knee before Odysseos.

“Thank you, great king,” I said, hoping it was with the proper degree of humility. “I and my men will serve you to the best of our abilities.”

Odysseos took the armlet from his bicep and clasped it on my arm. “Rise, Lukka the Hittite. Your courage and strength shall be a welcome addition to our forces.” To the officer who had led us in, still standing behind Poletes and me, he said, “Antiklos, see that they get proper garb and all else that they require.”

Then he nodded a dismissal at me. I turned and we marched away from Odysseos and the two others. Poletes was beaming at me, but I realized that my travel-worn clothes must look threadbare to the Achaians. Antiklos looked me up and down again as if measuring me, not for clothing, but as a fighter.

As we left the tent and went back into the weakening rain I could hear Nestor’s piercing voice, “Very crafty of you, son of Laertes! By bringing him into your house hold you gain the favor of Athene, whom he undoubtedly 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 when Dardanian pirates were raiding the coast of my kingdom and nobody seemed to be able to stop them, since King Minos’ fleet had been destroyed in the great tidal wave. Well, the pirates captured a merchant boat 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, loud as it was, finally faded as we made our way through the faltering drizzle back down the rope ladder to the beach.

15

The rain petered out although the wind still gusted cold and sharp as I rounded up my squad. Antiklos said nothing until the dozen of us, plus Poletes, were standing before him with spears and shields.

“Are those helmets iron?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “The Hatti know how to work iron.”

Antiklos gave a grudging grunt. “You’d better sleep lightly. There are thieves in camp.”

I made a smile for him. “If I see any man wearing any piece of our equipment I’ll give him an iron sword—in his belly.”

He smiled back. “Follow me, then.”

He led us past several Ithacan boats pulled up onto the beach. Then we came to a sizable hut made of logs and daubed with the same smelly black pitch that caulked the boats. It was the largest structure that I had seen in the Achaians’ camp, taller than two men’s height, big enough to house several dozen men or more, 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 ware house and armory that made Poletes whistle with astonishment. Chariots were stored against the far wall, tilted up with their yokes nearly touching the beams of the ceiling. Stacks of helmets and armor were neatly piled along the wall on our right, while racks of spears, swords and bows lined the wall opposite. The ground was covered with rows of chests stuffed with clothes and blankets.

“So much!” Poletes gasped.

Antiklos 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 high with clay tablets.

“What now? Haven’t I enough to do without you dragging in a troop of strangers?” he whined. He was a lean and resentful old grump, his hands gnarled and twisted into claws, his back stooped.

“New ones for you, scribe,” said Antiklos. “My lord Odysseos wants them outfitted properly.” And with that, Antiklos turned and ducked through the shed’s doorway. But not before giving me a wink and a grin.

The scribe shuffled over close enough almost to touch me, then squinted at Poletes and my men. “My lord Odysseos, heh? And how does he expect me to find proper gear for the dozen of you?”

“Thirteen,” Poletes said.

The scribe made a gesture in the air with his deformed hands. “An unlucky number! Zeus protect me!”

He grumbled and muttered as he led me past tables laden with bronze cuirasses, arm protectors, greaves and plumed helmets. I stopped and picked up one of the fancy bronze helmets.

“Not that!” the scribe screeched. “Those are not for the likes of you.”

I tossed the helmet back onto the table with a dull clunk. “We have our own arms and armor,” I said. “What we require is clothes and blankets. And tenting.”

Scowling as he replaced the helmet in its proper spot on the table, the scribe then sank one of his 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 these.”

It took awhile. Poletes grumbled about fleas while my men rummaged among the pile, shaking out garments and blankets and joking among themselves about it.

“In finery like this,” Harta said, grinning, “I’ll make the women swoon when I walk up to them.”

“They’ll swoon from your stink,” Magro answered him. “Try taking a bath first. You won’t smell so bad then.”

At length we had dressed ourselves in linen tunics and leather skirts. They were stained and hardly new, but much better than the travel-worn togs we had arrived in. While the scribe glared and grumbled at us, I made certain that Poletes got a tunic and a wool shirt.

The scribe resisted with howls and curses but I made certain that each of my men took a good blanket, Poletes included. We also took canvas, poles and pegs for making tents. He squealed and argued and threatened that he would tell the king himself what a spendthrift I was. He wouldn’t stop until I picked him off his feet by the front of his tunic and shook him a few times. Then he shut up and let us take what we needed. But his scowl would have curdled milk.

By the time we left the shed the rain had stopped altogether and the westering sun was rapidly drying the puddles along the beach. We found a clear space and settled down. The men began putting up tents. I sent Karsh and Tiwa to find wood for a fire; Poletes scampered off to dicker for food and a couple of slaves to do the cooking. He came back with a flagon of wine in his skinny arms—and two chunky, unwashed women who stared at us with frightened eyes.

Sitting down next to our little fire, Poletes opened the flagon and handed it to me. “There are benefits to being of the house of Odysseos,” he said happily.

Yes, I thought. But how do I get to see my wife and sons, off in Agamemnon’s part of the camp?

By the time we had eaten our sparse meal and drunk the wine, the sun had set. A pale sliver of a moon rose over the hills to the east, but the everlasting wind off the water turned even chillier. I watched as my men crawled into their newly built tents and prepared for sleep. Yawning, I realized that I was ready for sleep myself.

But I still thought of my wife and sons. I could go to Agamemnon’s camp, I told myself. I could search for them there.

Then Poletes stepped to me, fell to his knees and grasped my right hand in both of his, tightly, with a strength I would not have guessed was in him.

“Hittite, my master, you have saved my life twice this day.”

I wanted to pull my hand loose. I could see my men watching us in the deepening shadows.

“You 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, Hittite. I will always be grateful to you for showing mercy to a poor old storyteller.”

He kissed my hand.

I felt my cheeks redden. Reaching down, I lifted him by his frail shoulders to his feet.

“Poor old windbag,” I said gruffly. “You’re the first man I’ve ever seen who’s grateful for becoming a slave.”

“Your slave, Hittite,” he corrected. “I am happy to be that, indeed.”

I shook my head, uncertain of what to do or say. Finally I muttered, “Well, get some sleep.”

“Yes. Certainly. May Phantasos send you happy dreams.”

I sat down on my blanket and drew up my knees, thinking that my wife was in this camp, hardly an arrow’s shot away from me. And my sons. My boys. I decided that sleep could wait. I was going to find them. I got to my feet.

“Hittite?” a voice called softly.

I automatically grasped the hilt of my sword.

“Hittite, the king wants you.” In the wan moonlight I saw that it was Antiklos standing before me, silhouetted against the starry sky.

“Bring your iron helmet and spear,” Antiklos said. “Leave your shield.”

“Why does the king summon me?” I asked.

Antiklos made a grunt. “He wants you to help him impress sulking Achilles.”

16

Ordering Poletes to stay, I followed Antiklos past the tents of my men to the prow of Odysseos’ boat. The King of Ithaca was standing on the beach. As I had suspected, he was almost a head shorter than I. The plume of his helmet reached no higher than my brows.

He nodded a greeting to me and said simply, “Follow me, Hittite.”

The three of us walked in silence through the sleeping camp and up to the crest of the rampart, not far from the gate where I had won their respect that morning. Men stood guard up there, gripping their long spears and peering into the darkness nervously. Beyond the inky shadows of the trench the plain was dotted with Trojan campfires. Above them the crescent moon rode past scudding silvery clouds.

Odysseos gave a sigh that seemed to wrench his powerful 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 boats.”

“Can we hold them?” I asked.

“The gods will decide, once the sun comes up.”

I said nothing. I suspected that Odysseos was trying to hit upon a plan that might influence the gods his way.

A strong tenor voice called up from the darkness below us. “Odysseos, son of Laertes, are you counting the Trojan campfires?”

Odysseos smiled grimly. “No, Big Ajax. There 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 Achaians: he towered over Odysseos and even topped me by several fingers. He was big across the shoulders as well, his arms as thick as young tree trunks. I felt a sudden pang of remorse: he reminded me of Zarton, my stubborn young ox.

Ajax stood bareheaded beneath 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 Odysseos and the other chieftains. With something of a shock I realized that Big Ajax could hardly be out of his teens, no older than Zarton was when I killed him.

A much older man stood beside him, hair and beard white, wrapped in a dark cloak that reached to the ground.

“I brought Phoenix along,” said Ajax. “Maybe he can appeal to Achilles better than we can.”

Odysseos nodded his approval.

“I was his tutor when Achilles was a lad,” Phoenix said, in a frail voice that quavered slightly. “He was proud and touchy even then.”

Ajax shrugged his massive shoulders. Odysseos said, “Well, let us try to convince mighty Achilles to rejoin the army.”

We started off for the far end of the camp, where Achilles’ Myrmidones had beached their boats. Half a dozen armed Ithacans trailed the three nobles and I fell in with them. The wind was blowing in off the water, cold and sharp as a knife. The sky above was clouding over. Perhaps it will rain tomorrow, I thought. Perhaps there will be no battle, after all.

Once we entered the Myrmidones’ portion of the camp we passed several sentries on duty, fully armed and armored, with helmets strapped on tightly, heavy shields and long spears in their hands. They wore cloaks, which the wind plucked at and whipped around their gleaming suits of bronze. They recognized giant Ajax and the squat King of Ithaca, and allowed the rest of us to pass unchallenged.

Finally we were stopped by a pair of guards whose armor glittered in the light of a big bonfire, just before a large cabin built of planks.

“We are a deputation from the High King,” said Odysseos, 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 answered, “Prince Achilles has been expecting you and bids you welcome.”

He stepped aside and gestured them to the open door of the cabin. Odysseos turned and beckoned me to accompany him, Ajax and Phoenix. The other Ithacan troops remained outside.

Mighty warrior that he was, Achilles apparently enjoyed his creature comforts. His cabin’s interior was draped with rich tapestries and the floor was covered with 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 smoke hole in the roof, but inside the cabin 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 rising 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 atop a dais, raised above the carpeted floor of the cabin like a king’s throne.

My first sight of the fabled warrior was a surprise. He was not a mighty-thewed giant, like Ajax. His body was not broad and powerful, as Odysseos’. 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; from the bleary look in his eyes 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 the four of us but up at Achilles. His tightly curled hair was reddish brown, rather than the usual darker tones of these Achaians. I wondered if it was his natural color. Like Achilles, he 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 thought that I understood the demons that drove him. A small ugly boy born to be 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 dark eyes were absolutely humorless. There was no doubt in my mind that he could outfight Odysseos or even powerful Ajax on sheer willpower alone.

“Greetings, Odysseos 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 to Achilles but his eyes were on the beautiful young man at Achilles’ feet.

“You bring a stranger with you,” Achilles said, his cold eyes inspecting me.

“A Hittite,” Odysseos replied, “who has joined my house hold, together with his squad of men. They will make a fine addition to our forces.”

“Indeed,” Achilles said thinly.

Odysseos got down to the subject at hand. “We bring you greetings, Prince Achilles, from Agamemnon the High King.”

“Agamemnon the bargain-breaker, you mean,” Achilles snapped. “Agamemnon the gift-snatcher.”

“He is our High King,” Odysseos said, in a tone that suggested they were all stuck with Agamemnon and the best they could do was to try to work with him.

“So he is,” admitted Achilles. “And well-beloved by Father Zeus, I’m sure.” The sarcasm in his voice dripped like acid.

It was going to be a difficult parley, I could see.

“Perhaps our guests are hungry,” suggested the young man in a soft voice.

Achilles tousled his curly mop of hair. “Always the thoughtful one, Patrokles. Always thoughtful.”

He bade us sit and ordered the serving women to feed us and bring wine cups. Odysseos, Ajax and Phoenix took couches arranged near Achilles’ dais. I stepped back, as befitted a common soldier. Patrokles got to his feet and filled all their cups from his pitcher of gold. The women passed trays of broiled lamb with onions among the noblemen. No one paid the slightest attention to me.

After a round of toasts and polite banter, Achilles said, “I thought I heard mighty Agamemnon bawling like a frightened woman earlier today. He breaks into tears quite easily, doesn’t he?”

Odysseos frowned slightly. “Our High King was wounded this morning. 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. Did it bring you to tears?”

Ajax burst out, “Achilles, if Agamemnon cries it’s not from pain or fear. 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 Trojans.”

“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 High King but he behaves like a thieving whoremaster!”

And so it went, for nearly an hour. Achilles was furious with Agamemnon for taking back a prize he had been awarded, some captive woman. He claimed that he did all the fighting while Agamemnon was a coward, but after the battle 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 that I haven’t,” he insisted hotly. “Yet that fat lard-ass can steal my rightful rewards away from me, and you—all of you!—allow him to 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 are not your enemies. They come to you on a mission of reconciliation. It isn’t fitting for a host to bellow at his guests so.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Achilles replied, almost smiling down at the young man. Turning to Odysseos and the others, he said, “It’s not your fault. I’m not angry at you. But I’ll see myself in Hades before I help Agamemnon again. He’s not trustworthy. You should be thinking about appointing a new leader among yourselves.”

Odysseos tried tact, praising Achilles’ prowess in battle, downplaying Agamemnon’s failures and shortcomings. Ajax, blunt and straightforward as a shovel, flatly told Achilles that he was helping the Trojans to slay the Achaians. Old Phoenix appealed to his former student’s sense of honor and recited childhood homilies to him.

Achilles remained unmoved. “Honor?” he snapped at Phoenix. “What kind of honor would I have left if I put my spear back into the service of the man who robbed me?”

Odysseos coaxed, “We can get the girl back for you, if that’s what you want. We can get a dozen women for you.”

“Or boys,” Ajax added. “What ever you want.”

I thought of my sons and felt glad that they were still as young as they were.

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 slender Patrokles topped him by a few finger widths.

“When Hector breaks into the camp I will defend my boats,” Achilles said. “Until Agamemnon comes to me personally and apologizes, and begs me to rejoin the fighting, that is all that I will do.”

Odysseos rose, realizing that he was being dismissed. Phoenix stood up beside him and Ajax, after glancing around, finally understood and got ponderously to his feet also.

“What will the poets say of Achilles in future generations?” Odysseos asked, firing his last arrow at the warrior’s pride. “That he sulked in his cabin 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 humiliated me.”

They walked slowly to the doorway, speaking polite formal farewells. I fell in behind Odysseos, as befitted my station in his house hold. 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.”

Odysseos 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. Odysseos 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 this war.”

“And if I am not?”

Odysseos smiled grimly. “No man lives forever, Hittite.”

17

In less than an hour I found myself walking warily in the moonlight down the ramp before the gate in our rampart and heading toward 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 hand was the impromptu symbol of a herald.

“These should get you past their sentries without having your throat slit,” Odysseos had told me. He did not smile as he spoke the words and I did not find his reassurances very reassuring. I carried neither shield nor weapons, except for a small dagger tucked into my belt.

“Go to Prince Hector and speak to no one else,” Odysseos 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 had asked.

Odysseos smiled at my simplicity. “Of course. But always with the demand for a huge ransom, plus all the fortune that Helen brought with her from Sparta. And always when we were fighting under the walls of Troy. Priam and his sons never believed that 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.”

He was crafty, this Odysseos. Far craftier than the other Achaian leaders. But I wondered, “Returning Helen is nothing more than a face-saving compromise?”

He looked at me curiously. “She is only a woman, Hittite. Do you think Menalaos, her husband, has been pining away in celibacy since the bitch ran off with Paris?”

Then he added, “Have you abstained from women while searching for your wife?”

That caught me squarely. I realized once again that it was my sons I truly sought. If we had been childless, would I have come all this way to find my Aniti?

Odysseos made me repeat his instructions and then, satisfied, led me to the gate in the rampart, where I had earned my moment of glory earlier that 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 creature. Here and there I could make out the glow of Trojan campfires, like distant stars in the shrouding fog.

“Remember,” said Odysseos, “you are to speak to Prince Hector and no one else.”

“I understand, my lord.”

I walked carefully down the ramp, the inky shadows of the trench on either side of me, and finally made my way through the slowly drifting tendrils of the mist toward the Trojan camp, guided by the fires that flickered and glowed in the distance. The fog was cold, chilling against my bare arms and legs, like the touch of death.

A sharp wind began gusting in from the sea and shredding the mist covering the plain. In the distance I could make out the beetling towers of Troy hulking black and menacing against the moonlit sky.

A dog began barking, and a voice called out of the darkness, “You there! Hold!”

I froze and clenched the willow wand in my fist. It seemed much too slim to protect me.

A pair of sentries approached me warily, heavy spears in their hands. Two massive dogs skulked before them, growling at me. I gulped down a deep breath of chill night air and stood immobile.

“Well? Who are you?”

“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 beard and a potbelly bulging his chain mail corselet, the other taller and painfully thin, either clean-shaved or too young to start a beard. I realized he was holding the growling dogs on a chain leash, and struggling to keep them under control.

“Prince Hector the Tamer of Horses he wants to see,” said the potbelly. He laughed harshly. “So would I!”

The younger one grinned and showed a gap where a front tooth was missing.

“An emissary, eh?” Potbelly eyed me suspiciously. “With a cloak on his back long enough to hide a sword. 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 cloak if it frightens you. There’s nothing hidden beneath it.”

“Be a lot safer to ram this spear through your guts and feed you to the dogs,” growled Potbelly.

The youngster put out a restraining hand. “Hermes protects messengers, you know. I wouldn’t want to draw the anger of the Trickster.”

Potbelly scowled and muttered, but finally lifted my cloak and satisfied himself that I was not hiding a weapon. He took my dagger, though, and tucked it into his own belt. Then the two of them led me to their chief.

They were Dardanians, allies of the Trojans who had come from several leagues up the coast to fight against the invading Achaians. Over the next hour, while the moon climbed higher in the starry sky and then began its descent toward the sea, 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 a stinking makeshift horse corral and rows of silently waiting chariots tipped over with their long yoke poles poking into the air, to the small plain tent and the guttering fire of Prince Hector.

At each stop I explained my mission again. Dardanians and Trojans alike spoke a dialect similar to the Achaians. Not one of them had the wit to notice that my words were differently accented, the speech of a stranger to their shores. I realized that Troy’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.

It must have been close to midnight when at last I was brought before Hector. His tent was barely large enough for himself and a servant. A pair of armed nobleman stood outside by the fire in bronze breastplates and fine helmets. Insects buzzed and darted in the firelight. No slaves or women were in sight. Hector himself stood at the entrance flap to his tent. I recognized those steady, grave brown eyes.

He was tall for these people, nearly my own height. Hector wore no armor, no badge of 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 the campfire he studied me for a moment. 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 war was taking its toll on him.

“You are the man at the gate,” he said. His words were measured, neither surprise nor anger in them.

“I am, my lord.”

He looked me over carefully. “Your name?”

“Lukka.”

“From where?”

“From far to the east, the land of the Hatti.”

His eyes widened. “You are a Hittite?”

“Yes, my lord.”

He puzzled over that for a few moments, brow knitted. Then he asked, “What brings you to the plain of Ilios? Why are you fighting for the Achaians?”

I said nothing. Odysseos had commanded me to give Hector his message and nothing more.

“Well?” Hector demanded. “Troy has always been loyal to the Hittite empire. We appealed to the emperor for help. Is this his answer? Has the emperor sent his army to fight against us?”

“I cannot say, my lord. I am commanded by King Odysseos to give you High King Agamemnon’s offer to end the war.”

“I’ve heard Agamemnon’s offers before,” Hector growled.

“But my lord—”

“Why are you fighting against us?” Hector demanded, his voice iron hard.

“My lord, I arrived at the Achaian camp last night, with eleven spearmen.”

“Hittite warriors.”

“Soldiers, yes. We had never seen Troy before, we didn’t know that you were at war. I was atop the rampart when the day’s battle started. Suddenly, in the midst of the fighting, I acted on impulse. I don’t know what made me jump in front of your chariot like that. It all happened in the flash of a moment.”

Hector looked into my eyes, as if to judge the truth of my words. “Battle frenzy,” he murmured. “A god took control of your spirit, Hittite, and inspired you to deeds no mortal could accomplish unaided. It has happened to me more than once.”

I was happy to take that path. “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.”

He turned and stepped inside the tent, beckoning me to follow him. The two noblemen standing guard stirred momentarily, then returned to their positions beside the fire. Inside the tent there was only a rough cot of stretched ropes and a small table with a single chair bearing a bowl of fruit and a flagon of wine with two silver cups flanking it. Hector took an apple and gestured for me to help myself.

He sat and poured wine into both cups.

“Sit, Hittite. Sit and drink.”

The quality of 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 leaned back tiredly in the creaking chair.

“I bring an offer of peace, my lord.”

“We have heard such offers before. Is there anything new in what Agamemnon proposes?”

I wondered if Agamemnon knew what Odysseos was offering, but decided that it was not my station to get involved in such matters.

“The High King offers to leave Troy and return to the lands of the Achaians if Troy will return Helen to her rightful husband.”

Hector nodded wearily. “And?”

“Nothing else, my lord.”

“Nothing?” He was suddenly alert. “No demand for ransom, or for the return of Helen’s so-called fortune?”

“No, my lord.”

Sitting up straighter in his chair, Hector ran a hand across his beard. “So now that we have him pinned against the sea, Agamemnon is willing to end the war if we return Helen to his brother.”

“That is what I have been instructed to tell you, my lord.”

Hector thought for several long moments, then began to speak slowly. “When he had us penned inside our city walls Agamemnon was not so generous. Now that we have the upper hand, he wants to run away.”

“With Helen returned to her husband, my lord,” I reminded him.

“Helen. She’s nothing but an excuse to make war against us. If we let Agamemnon go, he’ll be back next year with more fire and death.”

There was nothing I could say to that.

“No,” Hector muttered, more to himself than to me. “We have the upper hand now. We can drive them into the sea once and for all.”

My mind immediately painted a picture of the Achaian boats burning, Trojans killing with their long spears, slaves and women put to the sword in the orgy of looting and raping that follows battle. My sons, my wife, torn to pieces.

To Hector I said, as calmly as I could, “My lord, the Achaians believe your success in yesterday’s fighting 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 among the Achaians,” I pointed out. “And his Myrmidones are a formidable fighting unit, I am told.”

Hector fixed me with those steady brown eyes again. “No, Hittite. It was you who stopped me at the gate. If not for you, those black boats would be smoldering piles of ashes this very night.”

That staggered me.

“I hold no resentment against you. You were in the thrall of a god, and no man can undo what the gods bring forth.”

“Perhaps the gods will favor the Achaians tomorrow.”

“Perhaps.”

“Then what am I to tell the High King, my lord?”

Hector slowly rose 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 stood up, too.

“Polydamas,” Hector called, “conduct this herald to the king. Aeneas, spread the word that we will not attack until King Priam has considered the latest peace offer from Agamemnon.”

And suddenly I understood the subtlety of Odysseos. The Trojans will not attack the Achaian camp as long as I am dickering with their king. That will give Agamemnon and all the others a day’s respite from battle, at least. A chance to rest, bind their wounds, perhaps even convince Achilles to come back to the fight. Odysseos had sent an expendable hero, me—a man that Hector would recognize and respect, yet not a man important to the Achaian strength—into the Trojan camp in a crafty move to gain a day’s recuperation from the morning’s disaster.

Marveling at Odysseos’ cunning, I followed the Trojan nobleman called Polydamas through the moonlit night, across the scattered campfires dotting the plain and up to the walls of Troy.

18

I entered the besieged city of Troy in the dead of night. The moon was sinking toward the sea; it was so dark I could see practically nothing. The city wall loomed above me like a threatening shadow. I could see feeble lanterns by the 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 along the high wall. Very sound construction: troops attempting to storm the gate would have to go along the base of the wall, where defenders from above could fire arrows, stones, boiling water on them. Just before the gate a second curtain wall extended on the other side of the road, so attackers would be vulnerable to fire from both sides, as well as straight ahead, above the gate itself.

The gate was built of heavy oak, wide enough for two chariots to pass through side by side. It was slightly ajar and seemed only lightly defended at this hour of the night. Virtually the entire Trojan force was encamped down by the beach, I realized. A trio of teenagers were sitting by the open gateway, wearing neither armor nor helmets. Their shields and long spears rested against the stone wall. A few more stood on the battlements above, visible in the flickering of a fire they had going to keep themselves warm up there.

Inside, a broad packed-earth street meandered between buildings that seemed no more than two stories tall. The moon’s fading light only made the shadows of their shuttered fronts seem deeper and darker. No one was stirring at this time of night along the main street or in the black alleyways leading off it, not even a cat.

My impression was that Troy was much smaller than Hattusas. Then I remembered that Hattusas was in ruin and ashes. Was that the fate that awaited this city?

Polydamas was not a wordy fellow. Unlike the Achaians, he spoke to me only when it was necessary. In almost total silence he led me to a low-roofed building and into a tiny room lit by the fluttering yellowblue flame of a small copper oil lamp sitting on a wooden stool next to a narrow bed, covered by a rough woolen blanket. The only other furniture in the room was a chest made of cedarwood, its front intricately carved.

“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 sat out on the bed. It was springy: a thin mattress of feathers atop a webbing of ropes. Reaching under it, I found a chamber pot. After using it, I stretched out and quickly fell asleep.

I dreamed of my dying father again, and of Hattusas burning as drunken gangs of looters raged through its streets while I did nothing, nothing. Aniti was in my dream, but she was nothing more than a shadow, featureless, like a fragile, feeble wraith, already dead and in Hades.

I was jolted awake by the sound of the door bolt snapping back. I sat up, immediately alert, my hand automatically reaching for the sword that I had left with my men back at the Achaian camp along the beach.

A serving woman backed into the room, carrying a basin and an earthen jug of water. When she turned around and saw me sitting there naked, she dropped her eyes and made a little curtsy, then turned and deposited the pottery atop the cedarwood chest. She scurried out of the room and shut the door. Within a moment I heard the giggling of several women from beyond the door.

I washed hurriedly and pulled my clothes on. As I was awkwardly tying the white cloth of truce onto my arm, 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.” His voice was high and soft, much like his stature.

Diplomacy moved at a polite pace, and I was glad of it. The Trojan courtier led me to the urinals in back of the house, then to the large kitchen that fronted it. Breakfast consisted of fruit, cheese, and flat bread, washed down with goat’s milk. I ate alone, with the Trojan courtier standing over me. No one else was in the room. Half the kitchen 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 only window I could see men and women out on the street, going about their morning chores. Two serving women came in and sat patiently by the hearth while I ate in silence. The courtier ignored them, except to order them to bring a plate of figs and honey for himself.

Finally we walked out onto 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 toward the palace.

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 thought of the emperor’s citadel in Hattusas. It made Priam’s palace look like a toy. But it was gone now, gone. As we walked up the street, I saw how small Troy really was. And crowded. Houses and shops clustered together tightly. The street was unpaved, and sloped like a V so that water could run down its middle when it rained. Cart wheels had worn deep grooves in it. The city buzzed and hummed with voices talking, bargaining, calling out wares for sale. Somewhere a woman was singing, high and sweet. 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 Paris and their brothers live in the palace with the king.” My courtier was turning into a tour guide. He gestured back down the street. “Near the Scaean Gate are the homes of the lesser nobility. Fine homes they are, nevertheless, far finer than you will find in Mycenae or even in Miletus.”

We were walking through the market area now. Awning-shaded stalls lined the two-story brick homes here, although I saw precious little foodstuff for sale: dried vegetables, a skinny lamb that bleated mournfully. Freshly baked bread filled the street with its aroma, though.

The merchants, men and women both, seemed happy and smiling despite their lack of goods.

“You bring a day of peace,” the courtier told me. “Farmers can bring their produce to market this morning. Woodcutters can go out to the forest and bring back fuel before night falls. The people are grateful for that.”

“The siege has hurt you,” I murmured.

“To some extent, of course. But we are not going hungry. There is enough grain stored in the royal treasury to last for years! The city’s water comes from a spring that Apollo himself protects. And when we really need firewood or cattle or anything else, our troops escort the necessary people on a foray inland.” He lifted his gray-bearded chin a notch or two. “We will not starve.”

I said nothing.

He took my silence for agreement. “Look at those walls! The Achaians will never scale them.”

I followed his admiring gaze down a crooked alley and saw the towering walls that rose above the houses. They did indeed look high and strong and solid. But I had led Hatti troops past walls that were even higher and thicker, more than once.

“Apollo and Poseidon helped old King Laomedon build those walls, and they have withstood every assault made on them. Of course, Herakles once sacked the city, but he had divine help and still even he didn’t dare try to breach those walls. He attacked over on the western side, where the oldest wall stands. But that was long ago.”

I perked up my ears. The western wall was weaker? As if sensing he had said too much, my guide lapsed into a red-faced silence. We walked the rest of the way to the palace without further words.

Men-at-arms held their spears stiffly as we passed the crimson-painted columns at the front of the palace and entered its cool, shadowed interior. I saw no marble, which surprised me. Even in distant Hattusas, the peoples of the Aegean Sea were known for their splendid work in marble. Instead, the columns and the thick palace walls were made of a grayish, granitelike stone, polished to gleaming smoothness. Inside, the walls were plastered and painted in bright yellows and reds, with blue or green borders running along the ceilings.

The interior of the palace was actually cold. Despite the heat of the morning sun those thick stone walls insulated the palace so well that I almost imagined I could see my breath frosting in the shaded air.

The hall beyond the entrance was beautifully decorated with painted landscapes on its plastered walls: scenes of lovely ladies and handsome men in green fields rich with towering trees. No battles, not even hunting scenes. No proclamations of royal power or fighting prowess.

Statues lined this corridor, most of them life-sized, some smaller, several so huge that their heads or outstretched arms scraped the polished beams of the high ceiling.

“The city’s gods,” my courtier explained. “Most of these statues stood outside our four main gates, before the war. Of course, we brought them in here for safekeeping from the despoiling Achaians. It wouldn’t do for them to capture our gods! What fate would befall us then?”

“Indeed,” I muttered.

Some of the statues were made of marble, most of wood. All were brightly painted. Hair and beards were deep black, tinged with blue. Gowns and tunics were mostly gold, and real jewels adorned them. The flesh was delicately colored, and the eyes were painted so vividly they almost seemed to be watching me.

I could not tell one of their gods from another. The males were all broad-shouldered and bearded, the goddesses ethereally beautiful. Then I recognized Poseidon, the sea god, a nearly naked, magnificently muscled figure who bore a trident in his right hand.

We stepped out of the chilly entrance hall and into the warming sunlight of a courtyard. A huge statue, much too large to fit indoors, stood just before us. I craned my neck to see its face against the crystal-blue morning sky.

“Apollo,” said the courtier. “The protector of our city.”

We started across the sunny courtyard. It was decked with blossoms and flowering shrubs. Potted trees were arranged artfully around a square central pool where fish swam lazily. These people are not warriors, I realized. Not like the Hatti or the Achaians. Artists and tradesmen, I thought, content to control the straits that led into the Sea of Black Waters and the rich lands beyond.

“We also have the Palladium, our statue of Athene,” the courtier said, pointing across the pool to a smaller wooden piece, scarcely five feet tall. “It is very ancient and very sacred.”

It certainly looked very ancient. Its face and draperies had been worn smooth from years of weathering. It seemed to be the image of a woman, but she was wearing a warrior’s helmet and carried spear and shield. A female warrior? I had heard of such but always dismissed the tales as mere legend.

We quickly crossed the courtyard and entered the other wing of the palace. As we stepped into the shade of its wide entrance hall, the temperature dropped instantly.

More guards in polished armor stood in this hallway, although their presence seemed more a matter of pomp and formality rather than security. The courtier led me to a small chamber comfortably furnished with chairs of stretched hide and a gleaming polished table inlaid with beautiful ivory and silver. There was one window, which looked out on another, smaller courtyard, and a massive wooden door reinforced with bronze strapping. Closed.

“The king will see you shortly,” my guide told me, looking nervously toward the closed door.

I took a chair and tried to relax. I did not want to appear tense or apprehensive in front of the Trojan king. The courtier, whom I assumed had spent much of his life in this palace, paced the floor anxiously. He seemed to grow more apprehensive with each passing moment.

At last 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 avid to have the war ended and his city safe and at peace once more.

Before I could reply the heavy wooden door creaked open. Two men-at-arms pushed it, and an old man in a green cloak similar to my courtier’s motioned me to come in. 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?”

“Lukka.”

“Of ?”

I blinked, wondering what he meant. Then I replied, “Of the House of Ithaca.”

He frowned at that, but turned and said, “Follow me.”

19

I walked behind the old man into a spacious chamber crowded with people. Five steps into it, he stopped and 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 Dardanelles, Protector of the Troad, Western Bulwark of the Hatti, Defender of Ilios—an emissary from the Achaians, one Lukka by name, of the House of Ithaca.”

The chamber was 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 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! There were women among them, in robes that were rich with vibrant colors and flashing jewels. That surprised me. Women were never allowed in the emperor’s audience chamber in Hattusas, I knew.

I stepped forward and beheld Priam, the King of Troy, sitting on a splendid throne of carved ebony inlaid with gold. It was set on a threestep-high dais. He was flanked on his right by Hector, who must have come up from his camp on the plain, sitting in a high-backed chair of carved wood. On the king’s left sat a younger man and standing behind him was a woman who could only be Helen.

My breath caught in my throat. She was truly beautiful enough to cause a war. Helen’s blond, golden curls fell past her shoulders. She had 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 her bosom. Her face was incredible, sensuous lips and alabaster skin, yet wide-eyed with an appearance of innocence that no man could resist.

The young prince on Priam’s left had to be Paris, I thought. Helen leaned against the intricately carved back of Paris’ chair, resting one hand on his shoulder. It took an effort for me to look away from her and study Paris. He was almost prettily handsome, darker of hair than his older brother, his neatly trimmed beard seemed new, thin. He looked up at her and she smiled dazzlingly at him. Then they both turned their gaze toward me as I approached the throne. Helen’s smile disappeared the instant Paris looked away from her. She regarded me with cool, calculating eyes.

Priam was older even than aged 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 robe 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 white 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 had never been presented to the emperor in Hattusas, but I had a vague idea of how to behave in the presence of royalty. I bowed deeply to the king, then to Hector and Paris, in turn. I caught Helen’s eye as I did so, and she seemed to smile slightly at me.

“Oh 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. “Great king, the Achaians are willing to leave your shores if you will return Helen to her rightful husband.”

It seemed as if nobody in the wide chamber breathed. The very air went still.

Then Priam wheezed, “And?”

“Nothing further, my lord. Return Helen and the war will end.”

Hector fixed me with a hard gaze. “No demand for tribute? No demand for Helen’s fortune to be returned?”

“No, my lord.”

Priam’s wizened face broke into a slow smile. “No demands except the return of Helen?”

“Yes, my lord.”

The old king turned toward Hector. “This is indeed a new and better offer.”

Hector frowned slightly. “Yes. With our army camped at their rampart. They know that we’ll be storming their camp and driving them into the sea.”

“At what cost?” Priam asked softly.

“I will never surrender my wife,” Paris snapped. “Never!”

“My lord,” I said, “I am a newcomer to this war. I know nothing of your grievances and rights. I have been instructed to offer you the terms for peace, which I have done. It is for you to consider them and make an answer.”

Paris was clearly angry. “We refused their insulting terms when Agamemnon and his host were pounding on our gates. Why should we even consider returning my wife to them, now that we have the barbarians penned up on the beach? In a day or two we’ll be burning their boats and slaughtering them like the cattle they are!”

Ignoring his son’s outburst, Priam asked me, “A newcomer, you say? Yet you claim to be of the House of Ithaca. When you ducked your head past the lintel of our doorway I thought you might be the one they call Great Ajax.”

I replied, “King Odysseos has taken me into his house hold, my lord king. I arrived on these shores only a few days ago.”

“And singlehandedly stopped me from storming the Achaian camp,” Hector said, somewhat ruefully. “Too bad Odysseos has adopted you. I wouldn’t mind having such a fearless man at my side.”

Surprised by his offer, I answered merely, “I fear that would be impossible, my lord.”

Priam stirred on his throne, coughed painfully, then said, “We thank you for the message you bring, Lukka of the House of Ithaca. Now we must consider before making answer.”

He gestured a feeble dismissal. I bowed again and backed away from the throne. The courtier who had brought me escorted me back to the door of the anteroom. The guards closed the heavy door behind me and I was alone in the small chamber. I went to the window and looked out at the colorful garden, so peaceful, so bright with flowers and humming bees intent on their morning’s work. No hint of war there. I found myself wondering what my wife was doing, and where my sons might be.

Useless daydreaming, I told myself. But still my thoughts wandered and my fears rose, dark and troubling.

Then a different picture formed in my mind: Agamemnon and his warriors raging through this palace, destroying this beautiful garden, slaughtering Hector and aged Priam and all the rest.

And Helen? What would they do with Helen? Return her to her husband, Menalaos? Would he take her back after her willing marriage to Paris? Or would she be killed along with all the others?

I clenched my fists and squeezed my eyes tight. I tried to regain the vision of my wife and sons.

“Lukka of the House 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,” he commanded.

I went with him down a long hallway and up a flight of steps, then through several rooms that were empty of people, although richly furnished and decorated with gorgeous tapestries. They would burn well, I found myself thinking. Up another flight of stairs we went, and finally he ushered me into a comfortable sitting room with wide undraped windows that looked out onto a broad terrace and the distant dark blue sea. Lovely murals decorated the walls, scenes of peaceful men and languid 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.

20

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 her wrists and earlobes. Jeweled rings glittered on her fingers.

Behind her, standing just inside the doorway, stood an older, darker woman, in a hooded black robe that reached to the floor. Dark and silent as a specter, she watched me with eyes that seemed to glow from within the shadow of her hood. A servant, I thought, although she looked more like Death itself to me. I tried to ignore her, reasoning that Helen would not be alone with a man, especially an emissary from Agamemnon, the brother of her true husband.

Helen was tiny, almost delicate despite her hourglass figure. Her skin was like cream, unblemished and much lighter than the women I had seen in the Achaian camp. Lighter even than my wife’s, she who had been born in the mountains of the Hatti homeland. Helen’s 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 delicate shoulders. One stubborn curl hung down over her forehead. She wore a scent of flowers: light, clean, yet beguiling.

She smiled at me and gestured toward a chair as she took a cushioned couch, her back to the open windows. I sat and waited respectfully for her to speak. She was a woman, of course, but she had been Queen of Sparta and was now a princess of Troy. No ordinary woman, she.

“You say you are a stranger to this land.” Her voice was low, melodious. I could understand how Paris 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 here only two days ago.”

“You are a traveler, then?”

“Not by choice.”

She looked at me with a hint of suspicion in those clear blue eyes. “A warrior?”

“I have been a soldier in the army of the Hatti, my lady.”

She blinked with surprise. “You are a Hittite?”

“Yes, my lady.”

Suddenly Helen was filled with happiness. “The Hittites are sending troops here to help us!”

“I fear not, my lady. I am here to find my wife and young sons, who have been taken into slavery.”

She looked genuinely surprised. “How can that be?”

With a shake of my head, I replied, “It is a long tale, my lady. Best not to bore you with it.”

“I see.” She hesitated, then asked, “What gods do the Hittites worship?”

I was the surprised one now. I thought a moment. “Tesub, the Storm God, of course—”

“Zeus,” she murmured.

“Asertu, the goddess of love. Arina, the sun goddess. Kusa, goddess of the moon.”

“You have no warrior goddess?”

“A warrior goddess?” The idea seemed ridiculous to me. Men are warriors, not women. “No, my lady.”

“Then you do not serve Athene, under any name.”

I shook my head.

“Athene despises me. She is the enemy of Troy.”

I remembered the weathered little wooden statue in the garden courtyard. “The Trojans honor her image, though.”

“You cannot fail to honor so powerful a goddess. No matter how much 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.”

“I was told that Apollo protects the city.”

She nodded, her lips pressed into a tight line. “Yet I fear Athene.” Helen looked beyond me, looking into the past, perhaps. Or trying to see her future.

I began to feel uneasy. The black-robed servant had not moved from where she stood in the doorway, her eyes boring into me from beneath her hood.

“My lady, is there some service you wish me to perform for you?”

Helen’s gaze focused on me again. A faint smile dimpled her cheeks. “You wonder why I summoned you.”

“Yes.”

The smile turned impish. “Don’t you think I might want a closer look at such a handsome stranger? A man so tall, with such broad shoulders? A man who stood against Hector and his chariot team and turned them away?”

She was teasing me. Taunting, almost. And I felt a stirring in my blood. I realized that Helen could melt stone with those blue eyes of hers.

It took me an effort of will to refrain from reaching out to her. I bowed my head slightly. “May I ask you a question, my lady?”

“You may—although I don’t promise to answer it.”

“The Achaians argue among themselves: did Paris actually abduct you or did you leave Sparta willingly?”

Her smile faded. She lowered her eyes, as if thinking hard about what answer to make. At last she replied, “Lukka, you don’t understand the ways of women, do you?”

“That’s true enough,” I admitted.

“Let me tell you this much,” Helen said. “No matter how or why I accompanied Paris to this great city, I will not willingly return to Sparta.”

I thought, But you will return, willingly or not, if Priam accepts the offer of peace that I gave him.

Helen spread her arms. “Look about you, Lukka! 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 your husband Menaleos is a king.”

“And an Achaian queen is still regarded less than her husband’s horses and dogs. 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 Odysseos’ Ithaca? No, Lukka. Here in Troy women are regarded as human beings. Here there is civilization.”

She seemed really angry.

“Then your preference for Paris 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 choice. The young lords of Achaia all wanted me … and my dowry. My father made the decision. If the Achaians should win this war, the gods forbid, and force me to return to Sparta with Menalaos, I will again be chattel.”

Before I could reply she added, “That is, if Menalaos allows me to live. More than likely he will slit my throat.”

The servant back at the doorway stirred at that, the first sign of life I had seen from her.

“Would you agree to return to Menalaos if it meant that Troy would be spared from destruction?”

“Don’t ask such a question! Do you think for one instant 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 in the Achaian camp.”

“Priam is near death,” Helen went on, her voice lower. “Hector will die in battle, that is foretold. But Troy itself need not fall, even if Hector dies.”

I thought, And if Hector dies Paris will become king. Making Helen the Queen of Troy.

She turned and beckoned to the older, black-robed woman. “Apet, come here.”

Still like a dark phantom, the older woman glided silently to her mistress’s side.

“Lukka, I wish my maidservant to deliver a message to Menalaos. Will you promise to protect her in the Achaian camp?”

I looked from Helen’s wide blue eyes to the coal-black eyes of the older woman, then back again. “My lady, I am only a common soldier, bound to the House of Ithaca.”

“Do you promise to protect my servant?” Helen repeated, with some iron in her voice.

I nodded once. “I will do my best, my lady.”

“Good.” Turning to the servant, Helen said, “Apet, you will tell Menalaos that if he wants me to return to him he will have to win me on the field of battle. I will not go willingly to him as the consolation prize for losing this war.”

I took a deep breath. Helen was far more daring than any woman I had ever heard of. And much more astute. I realized that she unquestioningly wanted Troy to win this war, wanted to remain in this city and one day become its queen. Yet she wanted her servant to tell her former husband that she will come back to him—if he wins! She wanted to tell him, through her servant, that she will return to Sparta and be a docile Achaian wife—if and when Troy is burned to the ground.

Clever woman! No matter who loses this war, she will protect her own lovely skin.

Helen rose to her feet, signaling that our meeting was ended. “Lukka, my servant Apet will go with you when you return to the Achaian camp. You will bring her to Menalaos, then see that she is returned safely to me.”

If Menalaos doesn’t cut her head off, I thought, for such a message. And mine with her. But I said nothing as I bowed to Helen and went to the door by which I had entered.

“May the gods protect you, Lukka,” Helen said to me as I pulled the door open.

“And you, my lady,” I replied. I stepped through the doorway, feeling the glittering eyes of Helen’s servant on my back like a pair of daggers. The guard who had brought me to this chamber was still waiting outside to escort me back to the king’s audience hall.

As the door swung shut behind me, I heard Helen telling her servant, “Apet, you will leave with Lukka and give my message to Menalaos. Speak to no one else. He will recognize you and know that you speak my words.”

“But my nursling …” The older woman began, in a voice dry and harsh with age. The door closed, and I heard no more.

And then it struck me. Helen had called me by my own name. All the others called me “Hittite” and nothing more. But she knew my name and used it.

I marveled at that.

21

The gray-bearded courtier who had escorted me earlier was waiting for me in the audience hall, still in his ceremonial long green robe, when the guard and I got back there. Otherwise the columned chamber was empty, silent except for our footsteps padding softly on the stone floor.

“The king and royal princes are deliberating on your message, Hittite,” the courtier told me, nearly whispering. “You are to wait.”

He left and I waited, wondering how and when Helen’s servant would meet up with me. The guard went to the far door and stood there, immobile, except for his eyes watching me. I studied Priam’s throne. I had never seen the throne of the emperor back at Hattusas, but it could hardly be grander than this magnificent chair of midnight-black ebony and its filigreed inlays of gold, I thought. Troy is rich, that is clear. No wonder Agamemnon and the other Achaians want it.

“Hittite.”

I turned to see Hector approaching me. And berated myself for not being alert enough to hear his footsteps.

“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, except for the ornamental dagger. No jewelry. No proclamation of his rank. He carried his nobility in his person, and anyone who saw him instinctively knew that here was a man of merit and honor.

Yet, as I matched him stride for stride through the palace’s maze of halls and chambers, 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 in tight silence to the far side of the palace and up a steep narrow stairway that was deep in gloomy 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.

“Paris 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 gusted at us and set Hector’s brown hair flowing.

From this vantage I could see the Achaian camp, scores of long black boats drawn up on the beach behind the sandy rampart and trench. The Trojan forces were camped on the plain, tents and chariots dotting the worn-bare soil, cook fires sending up thin tendrils of smoke that were quickly blown away by the wind.

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 it another hovering ghostlike in the blue hazy distance.

“Well, Brother, have you told him?”

I turned and saw Paris 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 seemed not that many years younger than his brother.

“I was waiting for you,” said Hector.

“Good! Then let me give him the news.”

“Wait,” Hector said, raising one hand to hold back his brother. “I have a question to ask this man.”

I thought I knew what he was going to ask me.

Sure enough, Hector fixed me with a stern gaze and said, “You say you are a Hittite.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“A soldier of the emperor?”

I nodded mutely.

“Is your emperor sending troops to aid us? We asked for help many moons ago. Are you the first contingent to arrive here?”

“And if you are,” Paris interrupted sharply, “what are you doing in the Achaian camp? Fighting against us? Claiming to be of Odysseos’ House of Ithaca?”

I kept my eyes focused on Hector. “My lord, the emperor of the Hatti is not sending troops to help you. He cannot even help himself. He is dead, murdered. The empire is racked by civil war. I brought my squad of men here seeking my wife and sons.”

Hector studied my face for long moments, as if trying to determine if I was telling the truth or not. I looked back into his steady brown eyes.

At last he murmured, “We’ll get no help from the Hittites, then.”

“So much for being the western bulwark of their empire,” Paris sneered. “When we need them, they have no strength to help us.”

Shaking his head, Hector said to his brother, “It changes nothing. At least the Hittites aren’t coming to fight against us.”

Paris looked surprised at that idea.

“Very well,” Hector said, with a tired sigh, “give him our father’s reply.”

Smiling nastily, Paris said to me, “You may tell fat Agamemnon that King Priam rejects his pathetic offer. Moreover, by this time tomorrow our chariots will be riding through his camp, burning his boats and slaying his white-livered Achaians until nothing is left but ashes and bones. Our dogs will feast well tomorrow night.”

I kept my face frozen, impassive.

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, Hittite. 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!” Paris snapped.

“Then we will have war again tomorrow,” I said.

“Indeed we will,” said Paris.

I asked, “Do you really think you are strong enough to break through the Achaian defenses and burn their fleet?”

“The gods will decide,” Hector said calmly.

“In our favor,” added Paris.

22

Hector gave me a four-man guard of honor to escort me out of the same gate that I had entered the night before. And Apet was standing at the gate waiting for me in her hooded black robe. Still as silent a Death, she fell in with my escort as we passed through the walls of Troy. The guards took no notice of her; it was as if she were invisible them.

They called it the Scaean Gate, and I learned that it was the largest of four gates to the city. In the daylight 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 together to a height some five times more than the tallest man. High square towers surmounted the walls at each gate and at the 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, an 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.

“Who is this?” he asked, staring at Apet.

“A messenger from Helen,” I replied.

Poletes’ eyes brightened. “What news does she bring?”

“Nothing good,” I said. “There will be battle tomorrow.”

Poletes’ skinny shoulders slumped beneath his threadbare tunic. “The fools. The bloody fools.”

“Where are my men?” I asked.

With a gesture, he replied, “At the Ithacans’ camp, by the boats.”

I nodded, then headed for Odysseos, with Poletes skipping beside me, his knobby legs working overtime to keep pace with me, and Apet plodding along after us. All through the camp men were busily sharpening swords, repairing battered shields, wrapping wounds with fresh strips of cloth soaked in olive oil. Soldiers and noblemen alike stared at us, reading in my grim face the news I carried from Troy. The women looked, too, then turned away, knowing that tomorrow would bring more blood and carnage and terror. Most of the slaves were natives of this land and hoped to be freed from their 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 house holds.

I had to find my wife and sons before tomorrow’s battle, I knew. I had to get Odysseos to fulfill his promise to me.

Once we reached my men, hard by Odysseos’ boats, I instructed Poletes, “Take care of this woman. She bears a message for Menalaos from Helen.”

He nodded agreement and I left them with my men while I went to Odysseos’ boat to deliver my news.

There was only one guard on the deck, and he didn’t even have a spear. He was sitting on the boat’s gunwale, honing his sword with a whetstone.

“The king?” he replied when I asked for Odysseos. Pointing to the sea, he told me, “He’s out there with the dolphins, Hittite. Every morning he swims in the sea.”

I followed his outstretched arm and saw Odysseos moving purposefully through the waves, his arms swinging up rhythmically, his bearded face turning upward for a gulp of air and then sliding down into the water once more. I had never seen a man swimming before; it looked strange, unnatural.

But when Odysseos clambered back onto the deck, naked and dripping, he was smiling and invigorated. Servants appeared with towels and clothing in their arms.

“Hittite,” he said as he rubbed himself briskly with one of the rough towels. “You delivered my message to Prince Hector?”

“I did, sire. He had me repeat it to Priam and his court.”

Odysseos dismissed his servants to hear my report. Sitting on a threelegged 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 when I told him that Priam and his sons rejected the Achaian peace terms.

“They offered no counter terms?” he asked.

“None, my lord. Paris said he would never surrender Helen under any circumstances.”

“Nothing else?”

I hesitated, then said, “Helen has sent one of her maidservants with me to give a message to Menalaos. She says that she will return with him to Sparta only if he conquers Troy and she has no other choice.”

Almost smiling, Odysseos said, “If he conquers Troy. Agamemnon would be very surprised to hear that.”

I added, “Hector and Paris seemed quite certain that tomorrow they will break into this camp and burn the boats.”

Odysseos tugged at his beard, muttering, “They know they have the upper hand.”

I looked out across the rows of beached boats. Each of them had its mast in place and its sail furled, ready to be opened at a word of command. The crews were making ready to sail, I realized. The day before, most of the masts had been down.

Finally, Odysseos rose to his feet and called for his servants to dress him. “You will come with me, Hittite,” he said urgently. “Agamemnon must hear of this.”

“My lord, you said that you would return my wife and sons from the High King to me. I want to take them to a place of safety before tomorrow’s battle starts.”

Odysseos almost laughed at me. “A place of safety? Where?”

I had no answer.

“No, Hittite,” he said as two women brought him a clean tunic and sandals. “I’m going to need you and your men behind me tomorrow. We’ll talk of your family after the battle.” Then he added, “If we still live.”

Odysseos bade me wait until Agamemnon called a meeting of his council to discuss the news I brought. I asked him to allow me to bring Apet to Menalaos’ hut but he said only, “After the council meeting.”

So I waited with my men—and Helen’s maidservant—by our campfire while the slave women prepared the midday meal. My mind was in turmoil. My wife and sons were in Agamemnon’s part of the camp. I had to see them, had to find out for myself if they were alive.

I found myself walking through the camp, ignoring the men sitting around their cook fires spearing meat from their steaming kettles. Perhaps somehow I could get my family away from the High King’s men and bring them here to Odysseos’ camp, under my protection. If they still lived, after all these months. If they still lived.

How can I get them away from Agamemnon’s men? I wondered. I had no answer. Of course, discipline in the camp was practically nonexistent. These Achaians seemed to have no idea of military authority, no concept of correct order. Perhaps I could bluff my way through what ever guards I encountered.

Soon enough I came to the boats with Agamemnon’s golden lions painted on their prows. Several plank huts had been built here and the area teemed with men in armor and slaves in rags.

No one stopped me or even seemed to notice a stranger in their midst. I still wore the leather harness and iron-studded jerkin of the Hatti. I had left my spear and shield back at Odysseos’ camp, but my iron sword was strapped to my side and my helmet tied tight on my head. As elsewhere in the camp, most of the men were circled around the cook fires, jabbing at their midday meat. I saw dozens of women serving them, but not my Aniti.

A pair of men stood lounging in front of one of the black-hulled boats, leaning on their long spears and gesticulating with their free hands as they talked animatedly together. The Achaian version of guards, I thought.

They abruptly stopped their conversation as I approached them and stared questioningly at me.

Before they could ask, I said, “I am Lukka, the Hittite.”

Both of them were almost a full hand shorter than I, their skins dark, their beards shaggy, their heads bare.

“You’re the one who stopped Hector yesterday,” said one of them. He had a scar across his forehead.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m looking for a woman—”

“Who isn’t?” the other one joked.

“My wife,” I said.

Their heavy brows went up.

“She’s a Hittite. Pale skin. Almost as tall as I am. Her hair is lighter than yours. Her name is Aniti.”

Recognition dawned in their eyes. “Oh. You mean the whore.”

23

I must have blinked with shock. Without conscious decision, my hand shot out and I grabbed the Achaian by the front of his tunic.

“What did you say?”

His eyes widened. I saw his companion grip his spear with both hands.

“The Hittite woman,” sputtered the man I was holding in my fist. “She … she’s a …”

“Don’t start trouble, Hittite,” said the other one, hefting his spear.

“She’s my wife,” I snapped.

The one I held pointed with a shaking finger. “She’s probably back there, beside the boat.”

“Aniti, the Hittite,” the other one said.

I let go of the man and strode past them, toward the nearest boat. Raging fury burned inside me. A whore? My wife, a whore? Bad enough to be a slave, a captive who has no choice but to obey her master. But a whore? To willingly give herself to men for gain? I was infuriated enough to kill. I saw nothing either to my right or left, only the boat with a group of raggedly clad women huddled under its curving prow.

And in their midst, two little boys playing in the sand. My sons!

I rushed up to them. The women scattered, the boys looked up with sudden fear in their faces. They looked all right otherwise, unharmed, unmarked, faces dirty and perhaps thinner than other children I’d seen, but certainly not starving, not injured.

They bolted and ran away from me, wailing. Into the arms of their mother.

Aniti dropped to her knees and scooped them up in her arms. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “What’s—”

Then she looked up and saw me.

“Lukka,” she gasped.

“Aniti.”

She got to her feet slowly. The boys hid behind the skirt of her filthy chemise. She looked somewhat heavier than I remembered her, her face smeared with grime, her eyes staring disbelievingly.

“I …” she seemed stunned with surprise. And fear. And shame, I thought. “You’re here.”

“I came from Hattusas to find you and my sons.”

“All that way …”

“You …” I felt just as tongue-tied as she. “They made you a slave.”

She nodded bleakly. “And worse.”

“A whore?”

“To protect the babies. When the slavers attacked our caravan, I did what I had to do to protect them.”

“A whore?” I repeated, miserable in every bone of my body. The anger was gone; I felt ashamed, humiliated.

Aniti’s face hardened. “How do you think I kept them alive? All the way from Hattusas to here. How do you think I kept the slavers and these dogs of barbarians from spitting your sons on their spears?”

I couldn’t find words. There was nothing to say.

“You didn’t protect me!” she snapped, her voice rising. “Your fine army and all the emperor’s men didn’t protect me! Or your sons! I had to do it the only way I could, the only way you men would allow!”

She was blazing with fury. The boys looked wide-eyed, frightened.

I heard myself say—mutter, really—”I’ll get you back from Agamemnon. You and the boys.”

“No you won’t. The High King doesn’t give away his slaves. Especially those he enjoys having.”

I slapped her face. I didn’t mean to, my hand flashed out on its own. Aniti stood there in shocked silence, the mark of my fingers white on her reddened skin. My sons both burst into tears.

I turned and stalked away from them.

24

Feeling utterly miserable, furious with Aniti and even more so with myself, I made my way back to Odysseos’ camp. My men were sitting around the embers of their midday fire, honing their swords, checking their shields, doing the things soldiers do the day before battle.

Apet sat off to one side, silent and dark. I sat on the sand beside her, silent and dark myself. Dark as a thundercloud. My men took one look at my face and knew enough to steer clear of me.

My sons are alive, I told myself. That’s the important thing. No matter what Aniti has become, she has kept the boys alive and well. I’ll have to take them from her. They can’t remain with a whore, even if she’s their mother. Better she were dead! I’ll take them from her after tomorrow’s battle. If I live through it. If any of us live through it.

But what will I do with her? I can’t take her back, not now. I thought that perhaps what she had become was not her fault; she did what she had to do to protect my sons. Yet how could I take her back? Giving herself willingly to other men. How could I even think of taking her back?

For hours I sat there in silence, my mind spinning. Almost I hoped that tomorrow’s battle would bring my death. That would be a release. Yet who would protect my sons if I died? Who would shield them from the blood lust that turns men into beasts during battle? And Aniti? What will become of her? I knew I shouldn’t care, yet somehow I did.

It was nearly sunset when Odysseos strode up, dressed in a fine wool chiton, and ordered me to come with him to the meeting. I welcomed his command; I needed something to do to take my mind off my sons.

“Leave your sword,” the King of Ithaca told me. “No weapons are allowed in a council meeting.”

I unstrapped my sword and handed it to Magro for safekeeping, then fell in step beside Odysseos.

“Agamemnon will be unhappy,” he told me as we walked through the camp toward the cabin of the High King. “I did not inform him beforehand that I was sending you to Hector.”

I thought the King of Ithaca should have looked worried, even grim, at the prospect of displeasing Agamemnon. Instead, he seemed almost amused, as if the prospect of defending himself before the council did not trouble him one bit.

Despite myself I longed for a glimpse of my wife and sons as we made out way toward Agamemnon’s cabin in the lengthening shadows of sunset. They were nowhere in sight. I tried to blot out of my mind the images of what Aniti did in the night. I tried to focus my thoughts on the boys instead. I tried.

The High King’s cabin was larger than Achilles’, but nowhere near as luxurious. The log walls were bare except for shields hung on them as ornaments, although the king’s bed was hung with rich tapestries. For all his bluster, Agamemnon kept no dais. He sat on the same level as the rest of the council members. The loot of dozens of villages was scattered around the cabin: armor, jeweled swords, long spears with gleaming bronze points, iron and bronze tripods, chests that must have contained much gold and jewelry. The High King had cleared the cabin of women and other slaves. None were there except the council and a few servants. And me, as Odysseos’ chosen emissary to the Trojans.

As soon as we all were seated in a circle around the gray ashes of the hearth, Agamemnon squawked in his high piping voice, “You offered them peace terms?” He leveled a stubby finger at Odysseos. “In my name? Without asking me first?”

The High King looked angry. His right shoulder was swathed in strips of cloth smeared with blood and some smelly poultice. He was broad of shoulder and body, built like a squat turret, round and thick from neck to hips. He wore a sleeveless coat of gilded chain mail over his tunic, which was cut away at the right shoulder for the bandaging. Over the mail was a harness of gleaming leather, with silver buckles and ornaments. A jeweled sword hung at his side. His sandals had gold tassels on their thongs. All in all, Agamemnon looked as if he were dressed for a parade rather than a council of his chief lieutenants, the kings and princes of the various Achaian tribes.

Perhaps he thought to overawe them with his panoply, I thought, knowing their penchant for argument.

I counted thirty-two men sitting in a rough circle around the glowing hearth fire in Agamemnon’s hut, the leaders of the Achaian contingents. Every tribe allied to Agamemnon and his brother Menalaos was there, although the Myrmidones were represented by Patrokles rather than Achilles. I sat behind Odysseos, who was placed two seats down on the High King’s right, near enough to give me the opportunity to study Agamemnon closely.

There was precious little nobility in the features of the High King’s fleshy face. Like his body, his face was broad and heavy, with a wide stub of a nose, a thick brow, and deep-set eyes that seemed to look out at the world with suspicion and resentment. His hair and beard were just beginning to turn gray, but they were well combed and glistening with fresh oil perfumed so heavily that it made my nostrils itch, even from where I sat.

He held a bronze scepter in his left hand; his right rested limply on his lap. The one rule of sanity and order in the council meeting, apparently, was that only the man holding the scepter was allowed to speak.

“Well?” he demanded of Odysseos. “How dare you offer peace terms in my name?”

Odysseos reached for the scepter. Agamemnon let him take it, grudgingly, I thought.

“Son of Atreos, it was nothing more than a ruse for gaining a day’s rest from the Trojan attack. A day the men are using to strengthen our defenses.”

“And to prepare the boats to sail,” muttered Big Ajax, sitting farther down the circle. Agamemnon glared at him.

Odysseos continued, “I knew that Hector and prideful Paris would not accept peace terms while their forces are camped at our gates.”

Before anyone could object, he went on, “And what if they did? Menalaos would have his wife returned to him and we could leave these shores with honor.”

Agamemnon snatched the scepter back. “Leave without razing Troy? What honor is there in that? I have sacrificed my own daughter to tear down Troy! I will not leave until that city is reduced to ashes!”

Odysseos reached for the scepter again, but Menalaos, sitting between him and Agamemnon, took it first. “If Helen is returned to me, we could sail for home and then come back next year, with an even bigger army.”

He was younger than his brother, but they shared the same pugnacious look to their faces.

Agamemnon shook his head hard enough to make his beefy cheeks quiver. “And how will we raise a bigger army, with Helen returned? Who will come to Troy with me once the bitch is back in Sparta?”

White-bearded Nestor, sitting at Agamemnon’s left, raised his voice. “High King, you do not hold the scepter. You have no right—”

“I’ll speak whenever I want to!” Agamemnon shrilled.

They argued back and forth, then finally commanded me to tell them exactly what the Trojan princes had said to me. I accepted the scepter, then got to my feet and repeated the words of Paris and Hector.

“Paris said that?” Menalaos spat on the sandy floor. “He is the prince of liars.”

“Pardon me, King of Sparta,” said old Nestor, “but you do not have the scepter and therefore are speaking out of turn.”

Menalaos smiled scornfully at the whitebeard. “Neither do you, King of Pylos.”

Nestor got to his feet and reached for the scepter. I handed it to him willingly. He remained standing as he said, “If this Hittite is reporting truly, Hector expects to storm our ramparts in the morning. Hector is an honest man, not given to deception”—he eyed Odysseos as he said that—”and a great warrior. Tomorrow we will face a battle that could well determine the fate of this war. I have seen such battles before, you know. In my youth …”

On and on Nestor rambled, secure in his possession of the scepter. Odysseos looked bored, Menalaos and the others of the council fidgeted in their chairs. Agamemnon’s face slowly reddened.

At last the High King grabbed the scepter from Nestor’s hand. Startled, the old man gaped at Agamemnon, then slowly sank back onto his chair.

“We face disaster!” Agamemnon cried, his narrow little eyes actually brimming with tears. “Hector could overrun our camp and slaughter us all!”

Odysseos leaned across and took the scepter from the High King’s hand. Holding it aloft, he proclaimed loudly, “We must not give way to despair! We must show Hector and his Trojans what metal we are made of. We will defend our camp and our boats. We will drive Hector away from our ramparts. Think of the songs the bards will sing of us when we are victorious tomorrow!”

A murmur went around the council circle. Heads nodded.

Odysseos turned to Patrokles, sitting almost exactly opposite to Agamemnon’s place. “Noble Patrokles, tell mighty Achilles that tomorrow he will have the chance to gain great glory for himself.”

Patrokles nodded solemnly. “Glory is what he lives for. But if he refuses, perhaps I could convince him to let me lead the Myrmidones—”

“You?” Agamemnon laughed aloud. “You’re too soft for anything but serving tidbits. Stay by your master’s side and let the men tend to the fighting.”

Patrokles’ face burned red. I thought Agamemnon had just thrown away what ever slight chance we might have had to get the Myrmidones to fight alongside us, with or without Achilles.

25

By the time the council meeting ended it was growing dark outside. I left Agamemnon’s lodge with Odysseos, as befitted my station. A considerable bonfire was crackling out there, casting a fitful red glare across the sand. The King of Ithaca waited outside the door of the lodge until Menalaos came out.

“Son of Atreos,” he said, reaching out to clasp Menalaos by the shoulder, “the Hittite tells me that Helen has sent one of her maidservants with a message for you.”

Menalaos’ heavy brows lifted with surprise. “She sends me a message?”

“Apparently so,” replied Odysseos, nodding.

“Bring her to my cabin then.”

Odysseos turned to me. “Do so.”

I left the two kings as they ambled toward Menalaos’ cabin and hurried to the campfire where my men were sitting with their evening meal, their swords and spears resting on the ground beside them, atop their shields. Apet sat with the slave women, her black robe pulled around her, its hood down across her shoulders, as she spoke animatedly to them. She’s not so silent with other women to listen to her, I said to myself.

Magro spotted me first and scrambled to his feet. The others quickly rose, also.

“Where’s my sword?” I asked them. I felt naked here in camp without it.

“We’re going to fight in the morning?” asked little Karsh as he picked my sword from the pile of weapons on the ground.

“Yes,” I said, taking the sword from his hand. “We’ll stand with Odysseos at the gate and show them what trained Hatti soldiers can do.”

“On foot, against chariots?”

“We’ll hold the gate,” I said flatly.

Magro laughed. “While the Trojan footmen scramble up the palisade and outflank us.”

I shrugged. “There will be plenty of Achaian footmen to defend the length of the palisade.”

Magro spat onto the sandy ground, showing what he thought of the Achaian footmen.

“Eat well and get some sleep,” I told them. “Tomorrow you’ll earn your keep.”

Before they could reply I walked over to the huddle of women. “Apet,” I called. “Menalaos wants to hear what you have to say.”

She pulled up her hood and rose to her feet like an offering of black smoke. Her features were shadowed by the hood, but if she felt any fear of facing her former master she showed nothing of it. Without an instant of hesitation she fell in step alongside me.

Odysseos was still in Menalaos’ cabin when we got there. The two of them were sitting at a trestle table, spearing broiled chunks of lamb from a large oval platter with their daggers, flagons of wine at their elbows. The King of Sparta ordered all his servants out of the cabin once his guard allowed Apet and me inside. I got the feeling he wanted Odysseos to leave, too, but he said nothing to the King of Ithaca.

Apet pulled down the hood of her robe as she walked beside me to the table. My stomach rumbled, reminding me I had not eaten since the morning, in Troy.

“You are Helen’s servant, the Egyptian,” Menalaos said truculently. “I remember you from Sparta.”

Apet bowed stiffly and said “Aye, my lord” in a low whispering tone.

“You went with Helen when Paris spirited her away.”

“Aye, my lord.”

“Why shouldn’t I have you nailed to a tree and burned alive?” he spat.

“Mighty king,” she said, with just a trace of mockery in her voice, “I have been Queen Helen’s faithful slave since she was a babe in arms. Her father brought me from distant Egypt to be her nurse and attendant. It was his command that I never leave her side.”

Menalaos snorted with disdain. “Your loyalty should have been to me. I am her husband.”

Apet bowed her head slightly, but said nothing.

Menalaos fidgeted in his chair and glanced uncomfortably at Odysseos, who focused his eyes on Apet.

At last Menalaos burst out, “Well, Egyptian, what message do you bring from my wife?”

Apet’s coal-black eyes never left his. “My mistress commands me to tell you that she will willingly return to Sparta with you only after you have conquered Troy. She will not accompany you as the consolation prize for losing the war.”

Menalaos jumped to his feet. “Consolation prize?” he roared.

“So says my mistress, your wife.”

He snatched his dagger from the table. “I’ll cut out your insolent tongue!”

Odysseos stood up and reached for his arm. I stepped in front of Apet.

“My lord king,” I said, “I have been charged by your wife to protect this slave and return her safely to Troy.” I rested my hand lightly on the hilt of my sword.

Odysseos made a smile and said, “Come, come, Menalaos. It does you no honor to kill a slave. A woman, at that.”

Menalaos contained his fury, just barely. Through gritted teeth he said to Apet, “Return to your mistress and tell her that I will pluck her from the funeral pyre that was once Troy. Then she will learn the fate that befalls a faithless woman.”

Apet nodded once, pulled up the hood of her robe, and turned to leave the cabin. I walked beside her, my hand still on my sword hilt.

When we reached Odysseos’ camp it was fully dark. The moon’s waxing crescent threw cool silver light across the beach, the boats and the tents that dotted the sand. Several of my men were sitting in front of the tents they had put up for themselves. Magro scrambled to his feet as I approached with Apet beside me.

“The others are wrapped in their blankets, snoring,” Magro told me.

“Poletes?” I asked.

“He’s snoring with the rest of them.”

I nodded as I glanced at the dying embers of our campfire. “Get some sleep yourself. Tomorrow will be a hard day.”

“And you?” he asked.

I forced a smile. “I’m hoping you oafs left some supper for me to eat.”

“I will bring you food, Hittite,” said Apet, surprising me. Without another word she moved off to where the women were lying in their meager blankets on the sandy ground.

I watched her bend over and rouse them, then turned back to Magro. “Get to sleep.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Enjoy your supper.”

I sat on the sand and gazed up at the bright shining stars. By this time tomorrow I might be dead, I thought, but the stars will still be there, fixed in their places by the gods themselves.

Apet returned with two of the slave women trudging along behind her, one bearing an iron pot, the other an armload of firewood. Within a few minutes they had the fire blazing beneath the pot. I smelled a stew of meat and onions and spices that were strange to me.

I began to think about my wife and sons again, in Agamemnon’s camp. Could I steal them away this night? Take them and my men with me out of this camp, away from this death trap? Would Aniti come with me? I realized that I couldn’t leave her here, in the degradation she had sunk to. Despite everything, I had to bring her, too. Could I get them past the sentries at the gate?

And go where? I wondered. Where?

Then I realized that Apet was bending over me, a steaming wooden bowl in her hands. I put it to my lips: the stew was burning hot but delicious.

“Take a bowl for yourself,” I told her. “Sit here beside me.”

She went to the cook fire and returned in moments. She sighed as she lowered herself to the sand; it was almost a groan. I realized she must be very old.

“I thank you, Hittite,” she said, her voice grating like a rusty hinge.

“I don’t like to eat alone,” I replied.

“I thank you for protecting me against that barbarian lout when he was angry enough to murder me.”

I looked into her face for the first time. The moonlight showed clearly that her skin was parched and wrinkled with age.

“I promised your mistress that I would protect you.”

“And you kept your promise.”

We ate in silence for a few moments. Then I heard myself ask her, “You have known Helen for many years?”

“Since she was a nurseling, Hittite, long before all these evils befell her.”

“She brought them on herself, didn’t she?”

Apet did not reply for several heartbeats. At last she said slowly, “If you only knew, strong warrior. If you only knew how the gods have wronged her.”

“Tell me, then.”

And there, in the moonlit night, with the cook fire slowly dying and the wind sighing in from the sea, while two armies waited for tomorrow’s battle, Apet told me of Helen and how she had come to Troy.