The Hittite

1

The Achaian camp was one gigantic orgy of feasting and roistering all that long afternoon and into the evening. There was no semblance of order and no attempt to do anything but drink, wench, eat and celebrate the victory. Men staggered about drunkenly, draped in precious robes pillaged from the burning city. Women cowered and trembled—those that were not beaten or savaged into insensibility.

Fights broke out. Men quarreled over a goblet or a ring or, more often, a woman. Blood flowed and many Achaians who thought they were safe now that the war had ended learned that death could find them even in the midst of triumph.

Above it all rose the plume of black smoke that marked Troy’s funeral pyre. The whole city was blazing now, up on its bluff. Even from the beach we could see the flames soaring through the roofs of the citadel and temples.

It was nearly sunset by the time I arrived back where Odysseos’ boats were lying on the sand. My men were nowhere in sight, although Poletes was sitting there glumly by the cook fire, still with my armlet hung ridiculously around his scrawny neck.

“Have you seen Odysseos?” I asked as I took it from him and fitted it back on my bicep.

“He and the other kings have gone to Agamemnon’s cabin. To night the High King will offer solemn sacrifices of thanksgiving to the gods,” he said. “Many men and beasts will be slaughtered and the smoke of their pyres offered to heaven. Then Agamemnon will divide the major spoils.”

I looked past his sad, weatherbeaten face to the smoldering fire of the city, still glowing a sullen red against the darkening shadows of the evening sky.

“You will be a rich man before this night is over, Master Lukka,” said the old storyteller. “Agamemnon cannot help but give Odysseos a great share of the spoils and Odysseos will be generous with you—far more generous than the High King himself would be.”

I shook my head wearily. “All I want are my sons and my wife.”

He smiled bitterly. “Ah, but wait until Odysseos heaps gold and bronze upon you, tripods and cooking pots of precious iron. Then you will feel differently.”

There was no point arguing with him, so I said merely, “We’ll see.”

I decided to go to Agamemnon’s part of the camp and get Odysseos to ask that my family be returned to me. But before I could go more than a few steps Magro and the other four remaining men of my squad came staggering drunkenly across the sand toward me, followed by more than a dozen slaves tottering under loads of loot: fine blankets and boots, beautiful bows of bone and ivory, colorful robes. And behind them came a half-dozen women who huddled together, clinging to one another, staring at their captors with wide fearful eyes.

Magro halted his little pro cession when he saw me standing there, my fists on my hips.

“Is this what you’ve taken from the city?” I asked him.

He wasn’t so drunk that he couldn’t stand at attention, although he weaved a little. “Yes sir. Do you want to pick your half now or later?”

It was customary for the leader of a squad to take his choice of half the spoils, then allow the men to divide the remainder among themselves.

I shook my head. “No. Divide it among yourselves.”

Magro gaped with astonishment. “All of it?”

“Yes. You’ve done well to stick together like this. To night Agamem non divides the major spoils. The Achaians may want a share of your booty.”

“We’ve already put aside the king’s share,” he said. “But your own …”

“You take it. I don’t want it.”

“Not even a woman or two?”

I scowled at him. “I’m going to find my wife, Magro. And my two sons.”

He nodded, but the expression on his face made it clear that he thought I was being foolish. And I realized that there was only one woman in the camp that I wanted: beautiful, forbidden Helen.

Shaking my head at my own madness, I left them there by the water’s edge and started again toward the part of the beach where Agamemnon’s boats rested on the sand.

Before I got halfway there I saw scores of slaves and thetes toting armfuls of driftwood, timber, broken pieces of furniture from the looted city toward three tall pyres that they were piling up in the center of the camp, each one taller than the height of a man.

From the other side of the pyres Nestor led a band of priests decked in fine robes taken from Troy in a pro cession through the camp, followed by Agamemnon, Odysseos and all the other chiefs—all in their most splendid armor and carrying long glittering spears that seemed to me more ornamental than battle weapons.

“They are preparing to make their sacrificial offerings to the gods,” said Poletes. I hadn’t realized he had tagged along behind me until he spoke. His face looked solemn, gloomy.

“Then Agamemnon should be in a mood to reward me,” I said.

Poletes shrugged. “Who knows what mood the high and mighty king will be in?”

I watched as Nestor led the parade through the camp, singing hymns of praise to Zeus and the other immortals. The sacrificial victims were being assembled by the pyres: a whole herd of smelly goats and bulls and sheep, hundreds of them. Horses, too. They kicked up enough dust to blot out the sullen embers of burning Troy up on the bluff. Their bleatings and bellowings made a strange counterpoint to the chanting and singing of the Achaians.

Standing off to one side of them were the human sacrifices, every man over the age of twelve who had been captured alive, their hands tightly bound behind their backs, their ankles hobbled. I recognized the old courtier who had escorted me to Priam’s palace. The victims stood silently, grimly, knowing full well what awaited them but neither begging for mercy nor bewailing their fate. I suppose they each knew that nothing was going to alter their destiny.

Then I saw a different group, women and boys: slaves from the camp. They were going to be sacrificed, too, I realized. Agamemnon had no intention of bringing them back across the sea with him. Gold, yes. Fine robes and weapons and jewelry that would add to his treasury. But not the slaves he had kept at camp, except for the royal Trojan women.

I ran toward them, seeking Aniti and my sons. A cordon of Achaian guards surrounded them, armed with spears.

“My wife!” I shouted at the nearest one. “I’ve got to find my wife.”

Like any soldier, he bucked me to his commanding officer, a stumpy, thickset Achaian named Patros. He listened to me with some impatience and told me to get one of the High King’s servitors to bring an order releasing my wife and sons.

“Let me find them,” I pleaded. “Let me see them so they know I’ll save them.”

Patros looked me over. He was a grim-faced old veteran with a dark bushy beard and a no-nonsense attitude.

“I’ll hold your sword while you search,” he said.

Gladly I gave him my iron sword and plunged into the crowd of women and boys, shouldering through them, looking for Aniti.

At last I found her, sitting on the ground amid a sad, bedraggled group of other women, mostly older than she.

She looked surprised to see me. Scrambling to her feet, she said, “Lukka! You’re here!”

“Where are the boys?” I demanded.

“The boys? What of me? They’re going to kill me!”

“I’ll get them to release you. Where are my sons?”

“Back at Agamemnon’s boats. I left them with one of his serving women.”

“Good.” I turned and started toward the guards ringing the victims.

Aniti grabbed at my arm with both hands, sinking her nails into my flesh. “Wait! Take me with you!”

“The guards won’t let you pass.”

She was suddenly frantic. “Take me with you! Don’t leave me! They’ll kill me!”

Other women began to crowd around us, each of them pleading, beseeching. I swatted the nearest with a backhand that knocked her to the sand and the others cringed backward.

To Aniti I said, “I’ll be back with one of the High King’s men. I’ll get them to free you.”

“No!” she screamed. “Don’t leave me here!”

Pulling free of her, I repeated, “I’ll be back in time to free you.”

At that instant one of the pyres lit up with a roar. Flames shot skyward. I could feel the blast of heat on my face.

Aniti sank to the ground, sobbing. “Don’t leave me, Lukka. Please, please, take me with you.”

I knew it was fruitless, but I bent down and lifted her to her feet. “Come on, then,” I said, as gently as I could.

Several of the other women followed behind us. Sure enough, Patros, still holding my iron sword, stopped us.

“You can go, Hittite. She cannot.”

Two of his spearmen moved toward us. One of them jabbed the butt of his spear at the crowd of women that was gathering behind us and they gave way.

“This one is my wife,” I said to Patros.

He shook his head. “Orders. The sacrificial offerings are to stay here until the priests come for them.”

Aniti seemed frozen with shock. She stood at my side, eyes wide, mouth half open, clutching my arm.

I said to Patros, “You can keep my iron sword. Just let me take my wife with me.”

He was a decent enough man. He knew he couldn’t back down from his orders, not even for a sword of iron. But he sent one of his spearmen to find a priest. I waited impatiently. I could see that Aniti was trembling, her eyes darting everywhere, panting with fear.

The spearman brought a priest, a young, apple-shaped fellow with smooth cheeks and oiled locks hanging down to his shoulders. His robe of sea-green was richly embroidered with gold thread: spoils from Troy, I reckoned.

Before Patros could say a word, I fixed the chubby young priest with my sternest glare. “This woman is my wife. I am a Hittite and so is she. She was included in the sacrifice by mistake. I’m taking her with me.”

He looked shocked. “Take one of the victims intended for the gods? Sacrilege! Be off with you!”

“The High King was to return her to me,” I insisted. “She’s here among the victims by mistake.”

“The gods don’t make mistakes,” he answered smugly. “You must accept their judgment.”

My hands clenched at my sides. I held my temper, but just barely. No sense starting a brawl when my sword was in the hands of the guard and he had a pair of spearmen backing him.

“I’ll be back with the king’s messenger,” I said to the priest. “If anything happens to my wife I’ll hold you responsible.”

The flames of the pyre cast flickering red highlights across his bloated face. “I serve the gods,” he said, his voice quavering slightly. “What happens is their doing, not mine.”

“And I’ll serve you on a spit if my wife isn’t here and unharmed when I return.”

With that I grabbed my sword out of Patros’ hand and headed off for Agamemnon’s cabin.

Aniti wailed, “Lukka, wait! Take me with you!”

I lowered my head and broke into a trot. There was no time to waste.

The second pyre burst into flame, and the ritual slaughter began. First came the animals, from a few doves to raging, bellowing bulls that thrashed madly even though their hooves were firmly lashed together, arching their backs and tossing their heads until the priest’s ritual stone ax cut through their throats with showers of hot blood. Horses, sheep, goats, all were being led to the sacrificial altars.

As the sun went down the pyres blazed across the darkening beach, sending up smoke to the heavens that the Achaians thought was pleasing to their gods. Before long the priests were covered with blood and the camp stank of entrails and excrement.

2

I reached Agamemnon’s boats. It seemed that the whole camp was gathering there. The spoils of Troy had been piled into a gigantic heap, gleaming and glittering in the fires of the pyres. Hundreds of captives were now being marched toward the altars that had been built by the pyres, guarded by solemn-faced warriors.

Agamemnon was sitting on a beautifully carved chair that had been pillaged from the city, up atop a makeshift platform that served as a rough sort of throne. He had already started to divide the spoils, so much for each chieftain, starting with white-bearded old Nestor.

The Achaian nobles were crowding around, greed and envy shining in their eyes. I searched for Odysseos and saw him standing off to one side of Agamemnon’s impromptu throne.

As I made my way toward the King of Ithaca, Agamemnon parceled out bronze armor and weapons, gold ornaments, beautiful urns and vases, porphyry and onyx, glittering jewels; kitchen implements of copper, iron tripods and cooking pots; robes, silks, blankets, tapestries—and women, young boys and girls. I thought of my sons. Were they safe? Would the High King hand them over to one of his heroes?

Half of everything Agamemnon kept for himself: the High King’s prerogative. But as I pushed past some of the chieftains and nobles I heard them complain about his tightfisted ways.

“He’s got the generosity of a dung beetle,” grumbled one grizzled old warrior.

“He knows we did the hardest fighting, up on the wall,” said an Ithacan. “And what do we get for it? Less than his wine steward.”

“Those women should have been ours, I tell you. The fat king is too greedy.”

“What can you do? He takes what he wants and we get his leavings.”

I thought that even Odysseos looked less than pleased as I neared him. The pyres lit his darkly bearded face with flickering lurid red.

I went around behind the assembled kings. A ragged line of guards in armor stood there, leaning on their spears. The Ithacans recognized me and let me through. I came up behind Odysseos and called softly, “My lord Odysseos.”

He twitched with surprise and turned to face me. “Hittite, what are you doing here?”

“My wife has been placed among the sacrificial victims.”

He frowned at me. “I can’t get Agamemnon’s attention now. Later, after the spoils have been meted out.”

“But that will be too late! They’ve already started slaughtering the human sacrifices.”

Odysseos glanced at Agamemnon, glorying in his conquest atop his makeshift throne. Then he pulled off the copper band from his wrist. It was studded with glittering jewels. Handing it to me, he said, “Find a priest, show him this and tell him that the King of Ithaca commands him to release your wife.”

It was as much as he would do, I realized. I thanked him and sprinted away to search for a priest. In the back of my mind I wondered if my sons were truly safe, but I knew that Aniti was in imminent danger.

It was maddening. The boys must be nearby, I thought. But I had no time to search for them. I pushed through the men crowded around Agamemnon and the pile of spoils, looking for a priest. They were all gathered at the altars that had been set up next to the three pyres, where guards were dragging old men and boys to their deaths.

I raced to the nearest altar, so close to the blazing pyre that the heat of the flames felt like an oven. A lad of ten or eleven was struggling madly as a pair of guards hauled him twisting and screaming to the waist-high stone they were using as an altar. Even with his hands tied behind his back and his ankles hobbled the boy put up enough of a fight for one of the guards to club him with the hilt of his sword. Then they hefted him up, moaning and half-conscious, and draped him across the altar. Three priests stood there, their robes and beards so soaked in blood that they looked black and evil in the flaming light of the pyre.

The boy’s eyes opened wide as the oldest priest raised his stone knife. He started to screech but the priest sliced the boy’s throat open in a shower of blood that silenced him forever.

There were several other priests, younger men, standing by the altar watching. Their robes were also stiff and black with victims’ blood. They looked tired from the work they had been doing. I clutched at the first one I could reach.

“What?” He seemed startled.

Showing him Odysseos’ bejeweled wristband, I said, “The King of Ithaca commands the release of one of the women. She was put in among the victims by mistake.”

He stared down at the jeweled copper band, then looked up into my face. “You’re no Ithacan.”

“I serve Odysseos,” I said, gesturing to the armband I wore.

The priest was young enough so that his beard was still dark. But his eyes were shrewd, suspicious.

“How do I know that you didn’t steal these trinkets?”

I slid my sword from its sheath. “I am a Hittite. My sword is iron. I serve the King of Ithaca.”

“I’m only a junior priest, fit only to slaughter animals. I can’t—”

“You’ll do what I ask or I’ll make a sacrifice of you.”

Strangely, he smiled at me. “So this sacrificial victim you want to save is a woman, eh?”

“My wife.”

That made his dark brows go up. “Your wife?”

“Come with me,” I said, clutching his shoulder once again. “I’ll explain on the way.”

Dragging the priest by his arm, I hurried across the sand to the crowd of victims that were now being herded slowly by their guards toward the sacrificial altars. I quickly told the priest my story, not caring if he believed me or not. The victims shuffled reluctantly toward their doom, some of the women wailing and moaning, but most of them silent and hollow-eyed, beyond hope. The guards prodded them along with their spears.

I couldn’t find Patros. The whole mass of victims was moving like a reluctant herd of cattle toward the blazing pyres and the blood-soaked altars. I could smell the iron tang of blood in the air, and the stink of fear: sweat and piss.

“You can’t pass through!” said one of the guards as we approached them. He waved his spear angrily.

“The Hittite woman,” I shouted at him. “She’s to be released.”

“What Hittite woman?” the guard shouted back, frowning. Three of his companions came edging toward us.

“My wife, dammit!” I snapped. “I’ve got to find her before she’s killed!”

The guard glanced uneasily at his cohorts, then turned back to me. “Our orders are to feed these people to the altars.”

The priest spoke up. “If one of the prisoners is among the victims by mistake …” He shrugged his shoulders, unwilling to say more.

“We can’t let prisoners go,” the guard said. “It’s hard enough keeping them moving. I’ve had to clout some of ’em.”

“I serve Odysseos, the King of Ithaca,” I said, thrusting the wristband under his nose. “He sent me to save my wife.”

He goggled at the band. “King Odysseos? Really?”

“Really. Now let me through. I’ve got to find her!”

He glanced at the other spearmen again, then looked questioningly at the priest.

“The gods don’t need a victim who’s offered by mistake,” the priest said.

“I guess not,” said the guard. He seemed more confused than unwilling. Finally he told me, “All right, go ahead and get her. If you can find her in this crowd.”

“I’ll find her,” I said, pushing past him and plunging into the throng of wailing victims.

I was growing frantic myself. Tugging the young priest along with me, I bulled through the throng of women and children, searching for Aniti.

The soldiers kept urging the crowd forward, toward the altars and blazing pyres. They prodded the victims with the butts of their spears, angry at any who was too slow to suit them. A few of them jabbed at the women with their spear points, laughing cruelly even when they drew blood.

One youngster—no more than twelve or thirteen, I thought—stumbled and fell to her knees. A guard kicked her, then pulled her by her hair, screeching, to her feet.

“Keep moving!” he demanded. “Keep moving.”

Up at the altars the priests were working in shifts, one man slitting throats until his arms grew tired, then another stepping into his place.

Aniti! I kept telling myself. She’s got to be in here someplace!

Where are you? I called silently as I elbowed my way through the sobbing, terrified women and children.

And another fear clutched at my heart. I dreaded the thought that I might find my own sons among the victims. The vision of their being tossed into the flames made me shake with anger.

Finally I made it to the head of the crowd, to the blood-crusted flat stone they were using as an altar. The women screamed and struggled as guards seized them, twisting their arms behind their backs and forcing them to bend over the reeking altar stone. Four priests stood wearily by, while a fifth slashed throats again and again with his ritual stone knife. The victims’ screams turned into gurgling death rattles, then the guards dragged the bodies off to the blazing pyres.

The priests looked tired, their faces set in weary resignation. The one who was doing the slaughtering straightened up and handed the knife to another, then stepped back, rubbing his aching arms. The killing went on, one after another, as mechanical as a blacksmith hammering out a sword blade.

The gods know I’ve killed men and never thought twice about it. But that was in battle, facing men who were armed and doing their best to kill me. What I saw now was nothing more than slaughter, butchery, gods or no gods.

I stepped up to the nearest priest, a shaggy-bearded old man, still dragging the young priest in my grip. The old man went wide-eyed.

“How dare you … ?”

“I seek my wife,” I said, and I shook the young priest’s arm.

“He serves Odysseos,” the young priest said, his voice high and shaking. “He says his wife was put in with the victims by mistake.”

The older priest scowled at me. “The gods—”

“She’s a Hittite!” I interrupted him. “She doesn’t belong here. She’s tall, with light brown hair. Her name—”

“A Hittite woman?” The priest searched my eyes.

“My wife!”

He shook his head, then turned toward the blazing pyre and the oily black smoke rising thickly from it. “She is one with the gods, Hittite.”

3

I stared at the black smoke rising into the darkening sky.

“Had we known …” the old priest began. But he saw the look on my face and lapsed into silence.

My young priest looked horrified. But he swallowed hard and managed to say, “The gods have taken her.”

The gods. Fat Agamemnon and these brutish warriors. Despoilers of Troy, killers and rapists. And I had helped them. I had helped them to kill my own wife. I know I should have felt hot, surging anger: rage, a killing fury. But instead I felt nothing. Nothing. I was numb. It was as if I had been plunged into the icy waters of the sea, sinking to the bottom. I heard nothing. I saw nothing. I wanted to scream. I knew I should wreak vengeance on these slaughtering barbarians. But I simply stood there, paralyzed, as cold as a block of stone.

I had caused this. I had helped them to kill Aniti. She had depended on me to save her and I had failed.

Then I thought about my sons. I had to find them before these Achaian butchers took them, too.

Abruptly I turned from the priests and their blood-caked altar and headed back toward Agamemnon’s boats. My sons would be there, if they lived.

If they lived.

I went from boat to boat, searching for them. A few remaining serving women huddled next to the curving hulls, on the side away from the fires, hoping that the black shadows would hide them from roving drunken Achaians, trembling and wide-eyed at the slaughter going on. Many were sobbing, hiding their faces in their hands. More than one had clapped her hands over her ears, trying to blot out the screams of the sacrificial victims.

A few young boys sat among them, equally terrified. Lads of ten or so, they seemed. Not my sons. Not my boys.

They all jumped with surprise at the sight of me, edging away at the sight of an armed warrior. I went from boat to boat, but my sons were nowhere in sight.

Then one of the older women, her white hair hanging limply past her shoulders, called to me: “Hittite? You are the Hittite?”

She was short and round; her wrinkled face looked like a crushed piece of parchment in the flickering red light of the fires. An aged grandmother, I thought. She belonged in a farm house with her children around her, not here on this blood-soaked beach before the ruins of Troy.

I stepped to her. “I am the Hittite,” I said.

“Aniti said you would come,” she said, in a voice cracked with age. “When they … when they took her she told me to … to protect the boys … until you came for them.”

“Where are they?”

She turned and walked slowly down the length of the boat. Near the steering oar, barely a dozen paces from the lapping water of the sea, two little boys were sleeping soundly beneath a single threadbare blanket.

Asleep. They’ve slept through it all, I realized. All the blood and fire, all the carousing and screaming. They looked so calm, so relaxed. Their hair was tousled, their eyes softly closed. The smaller of them had his thumb in his mouth.

I sank to my knees beside them. They’re alive. They’re unhurt. Thank the gods, they’re alive.

And then I thought of Aniti. Their mother. My wife. I couldn’t protect her, couldn’t save her. The last moments of her life must have been terrible. Being dragged away from her babies. Herded in with the other victims. Pushed closer and closer to the blazing pyres. Then forced down on the altar. The last thing she must have seen was that damnable stone knife.

I cried. The tears leaked from my eyes unbidden. I hardly knew Aniti, yet I felt a sadness, a sorrow beyond words. She didn’t deserve this fate. I should have done better for her. I had failed her.

But she had not failed her babies. Even as they dragged her off to the sacrificial fires, she had left the boys with this doughty old grandmother and told her that I would come for them.

How long I knelt there sobbing I don’t know. But at last I wiped my eyes and focused on my sons. I had failed to protect their mother, but I would die before I’d let any harm fall on them.

I rose to my feet. The old woman stood in the shadows, watching me.

“Thank you, Grandmother,” I said. Taking Odysseos’ bracelet from my wrist, I handed it to her.

“No!” she gasped. “I couldn’t.”

“Take it,” I said. “It’s not a gift. It’s payment for protecting my sons.”

Reluctantly, with trembling hands, she reached for the bracelet. Even in the shadow of the black boat’s hull its gems glittered.

She helped me lift the two boys into my arms. Lighter than my shield, they stirred sleepily but neither of them opened his eyes. Carrying the two of them, I strode past the boats of Agamemnon, determined to leave this camp, this beach, this accursed band of barbarian cutthroats.

And go where? I didn’t know, not then. Nor did I care. All I wanted at that moment was to take my sons away from Troy and the victorious Achaians.

Away from Helen, a voice within me whispered. And I loathed myself for the thought.

As I came to the Ithacan boats, where my men were happily dividing their spoils, Magro saw me approaching. He scrambled to his feet and ran to me.

“You’ve got them!”

“I’ve got them.”

“And your wife?”

I looked toward the flames still crackling at the pyres. My voice caught in my throat, but at last I was able to croak out, “I was too late.”

He shook his head. “Well, there are other women.”

I said nothing. Magro helped me to gently lay the boys on a blanket and cover them.

As we straightened up he said, “You’d better look after your servant.”

“Poletes?”

“He swilled down a flagon of wine and now he’s off telling stories that could get him in trouble.”

“Stories?”

“He’s mocking Agamemnon and his generosity.”

I felt my brows knit. “Isn’t everyone?”

“Yes, but he’s also talking about Queen Clytemnestra, back in Mycenae. If the High King hears about what he’s saying …” Magro ran a finger across his throat.

4

“Where is the old windbag?” I asked.

Magro waved in the direction away from the pyres. “He tottered off in that direction. I warned him to keep his mouth shut, but he’s full of wine.”

I pulled in a deep breath. “I’ll find him. Watch over my sons.”

Magro glanced down at the sleeping boys. “They’ll make good soldiers,” he said, grinning.

“What?”

“If they can sleep through this night, they’ll be able to sleep anywhere. That’s an important gift for a soldier.”

“You just make certain no one disturbs them,” I said.

Magro tapped his fist to his chest. I turned and started along the beach once more, searching for Poletes. I passed a stream of Achaians toting away their loot, many of them disgruntled with the share of booty Agamemnon had parceled out to them. The fire from the pyres was slowly dying, but off in the distance I could see the city still glowing red with flames behind its high walls.

I found Poletes sitting on the sand by a small campfire, practically under the nose of one of Menalaos’ boats, surrounded by a growing mob of squatting, standing, grinning, laughing Achaians. None of them were of the nobility, as far as I could see. But off in the shadows I noticed white-bearded Nestor standing with his skinny arms folded across his chest, frowning in Poletes’ direction.

“… and do you remember when Hector drove them all back inside our own gates here, and he came scurrying in with an arrow barely puncturing his skin, crying like a woman, ‘We’re doomed! We’re doomed!’ ”

The crowd around the fire roared with laughter. I had to admit that the old storyteller could mimic Agamemnon’s high voice perfectly. He was in good fettle, the gloom and melancholy of only an hour or so earlier seemed entirely gone now. Perhaps it was the audience surrounding him that had changed his mood. More likely it was the wine; I saw an empty flagon resting on its side an arm’s length from his squatting figure.

“I wonder what Clytemnestra will do when her brave and noble husband comes home?” Poletes went on. “I wonder if her bed is high enough off the ground to hide all her lovers?”

Men rolled on the ground with laughter. Tears flowed. I started to push my way through the crowd to get him.

Too late. A dozen armed men tramped in. Poletes’ audience scrambled out of their way like leaves blown by the wind. I recognized Menalaos at their head.

“Storyteller!” he roared. “The High King wants to hear what you have to say. Let’s see if your scurrilous tales can make him laugh.”

Poletes’ eyes went wide with sudden fear. “But I only—”

Two of the armed soldiers grabbed him under his armpits and hauled him to his feet.

“Come along,” said Menalaos.

I stepped in front of them. “This man is my servant. I will deal with him.”

Before Menalaos could reply, Nestor bustled up. “The High King has demanded to see this teller of tales. No one can interfere!” It was the shortest speech I had ever heard the old man make.

With a grim shrug, Menalaos headed off toward Agamemnon, his guards dragging Poletes after him, followed by Nestor, me and many of the men who had been rollicking at the storyteller’s gibes.

Agamemnon still sat on his slightly tilted throne, fat, flushed with wine, flanked by the treasures of Troy. His chubby fingers gripped the arms of his chair as he watched Poletes being hauled before him. Jeweled rings glittered in the firelight on each finger and both his thumbs.

The old storyteller sagged to his knees, trembling before the High King, who glared down at his skinny, shabby presence.

“You have been telling lies about me,” Agamemnon snarled.

Somehow Poletes found enough courage to lift his chin and face the High King. “Not so, your royal highness. I am a professional storyteller. I do not tell lies, I speak only of what I see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears.”

“You speak filthy lies!” Agamemnon bellowed. “About me! About my wife!”

“If your wife were an honest woman, sire, I would not be here at all. I’d be in the marketplace at Argos, telling stories to the people, as I should be.”

“I’ll listen to no calumnies about my wife,” Agamemnon warned.

But Poletes, still on his knees, insisted, “The High King is supposed to be the highest judge in the land, the fairest and the most impartial. Everyone knows what is going on in Mycenae—ask anyone. Your own captive Cassandra, a princess of Troy, has prophesied—”

“Silence!” roared the High King.

“How can you silence the truth, son of Atreos? How can you turn back the destiny that fate has chosen for you?”

Now Agamemnon trembled, with anger. He hauled himself up from his chair and stepped down to the ground before Poletes.

“Hold him!” he commanded, drawing out a jeweled dagger from his belt.

Two of Menalaos’ men gripped Poletes’ frail arms.

“I can silence you, magpie, by separating you from your lying tongue.”

“Wait!” I shouted, pushing my way toward them.

Agamemnon looked up as I approached, his piggish little eyes suddenly surprised, almost fearful.

“This man is my servant,” I said. “I will punish him.”

“Very well then,” said Agamemnon, pointing his dagger toward the iron sword at my side. “You take out his tongue.”

I shook my head. “That’s too cruel a punishment for a few joking words.”

“You refuse me?”

“The man’s a storyteller,” I pleaded. “If you take out his tongue you condemn him to starvation or slavery.”

Slowly, Agamemnon’s flushed, heavy features arranged themselves into a smile. It was not a joyful one.

“A storyteller, is he?” He turned to Poletes, who knelt like a sagging sack of rags in the grip of the two burly soldiers. “You only speak of what you see and what you hear, you claim. Very well. You will see and hear nothing! Ever again.”

My guts churned as I realized what Agamemnon intended to do. I reached for my sword, only to find ten spears surrounding me, aimed at my body.

A hand clasped my shoulder. It was Odysseos, his face grave. “Be still, Hittite. The storyteller must be punished. No sense getting yourself killed over a servant.”

Poletes was staring at me, his eyes begging me to do something. I tried to move toward him, but Menalaos’ men jabbed their spear points against my leather jerkin.

“Helen has told me how you protected her during the sack of the temple,” Odysseos said, low in my ear. “She owes you a debt of gratitude. Don’t force me to repay it with your blood.”

“Then do something, say something,” I begged. “Please. Try to soothe the High King’s anger.”

Odysseos merely shook his head. “It will be all over before I could speak a word. Look.”

Nestor himself carried a glowing brand from one of the dying pyres, a wicked, perverse smile on his wrinkled face. Agamemnon took it from him as the soldiers yanked Poletes’ arms back and one of them jammed a knee against his spine. Agamemnon grabbed the old storyteller by his lank hair and pulled his head back. Again I felt the spear points jabbing against me.

“Wander through the world in darkness, cowardly teller of lies,” said the High King.

Poletes shrieked in agony as Agamemnon burned out first his left eye and then his right. The old man fainted. The smile of a sadistic madman still twisting his thick lips, Agamemnon tossed the brand away, took out his dagger again, and sliced the ears off the unconscious old man’s head.

The soldiers dropped Poletes’ limp body to the sand as the High King tossed the severed ears to the dogs scrambling behind his makeshift throne.

“Well done, Brother,” said Menalaos, with a nasty laugh.

Agamemnon looked up and called out in his loudest voice, “So comes justice to anyone who maligns the truth!” Then he turned, smirking, to me. “You can take your servant back now.”

The soldiers around me stepped back, but still held their spears leveled, ready to kill me if I moved on their king.

I looked down at Poletes’ bleeding form, then up to the High King.

“I heard Cassandra’s prophecy,” I told him. “She is never believed, but she is never wrong.”

Agamemnon’s half-demented sneer vanished. He glared at me. For a long wavering moment I thought he would command the soldiers to kill me on the spot.

But then I heard Magro’s voice calling from a little way behind me. “Lukka, are you all right? Do you need help?”

The soldiers turned their gaze toward his voice. I saw that Magro had brought my entire contingent with him. There were only five of them, but they were Hatti soldiers, fully armed with spears and shields and iron swords.

“He needs no help,” Agamemnon answered, “except to carry away the slave I have punished.”

With that he turned away and started tottering back toward his cabin, up the beach, his dogs following him. The soldiers seemed to breath one great sigh of relief and let their spears drop away from me.

I went to Poletes and picked up his bleeding, wimpering body. As we started back toward our own part of the camp, I asked Magro, “My sons?”

“Safe with Odysseos’ women. I thought you might want us to back you.”

I nodded, too angry and relieved and filled with disgust to speak. But after a half-dozen steps, I told Magro, “We leave camp tomorrow.” “Tomorrow?”

“I want to leave this damned place and all its blood far behind us.” “But where are we going?” Magro asked. I had no answer.

5

I tended Poletes far into the night. We had only wine to ease his pain, and nothing at all to ease the anguish of his mind. I laid him on the cot in my own tent, groaning and sobbing. Magro found a healer, a dignified old graybeard with two young women assistants. He spread a salve on his burns and the bleeding slits where his ears had been.

“Not even the gods can return his sight,” the healer told me solemnly, in a whisper Poletes could not hear. “The eyes have been burned away.”

“The gods be damned,” I growled. “Will he live?”

If my words shocked the healer he gave no sign of it. “His heart is strong. If he survives the night he could live for years to come.”

The healer mixed some powder into the wine cup and made Poletes drink. It put him into a deep sleep almost at once. His women prepared a poultice and showed me how to smear it over a cloth and put it on Po-letes’ eyes. They were silent throughout, instructing me by showing rather than speaking, as if they were mute. They never dared look directly into my face. The healer seemed surprised that I myself acted as Poletes’ nurse, but he said nothing about it and maintained his professional dignity.

I sat over the blinded old storyteller far into the night, putting fresh compresses on his eyes every hour or so, keeping him from reaching up to the burns with his hands. He slept, but even in sleep he groaned and writhed.

Twice I ducked out of the tent and checked my sons. They were still sleeping quietly, side by side, wrapped in a good blanket, oblivious to the world and all its pain.

The candle by the cot had burned down to a flickering stub. Through the flap in my tent I could see the sky starting to turn a pinkish gray with the first hint of dawn. Poletes’ breathing suddenly quickened and he made a grab for the cloth covering his eyes. I was faster and gripped his wrists before he could hurt himself.

“Master Lukka?” His voice was cracked and dry.

“Yes,” I said. “Put your hands down at your sides. Don’t reach for your eyes.”

“Then it’s true? It wasn’t a nightmare?”

I held his head up slightly and gave him a sip of water. “It’s true,” I said. “You’re blind.”

The moan he uttered would have wrenched the heart out of a marble statue.

“Agamemnon,” he said, many moments later. “The mighty king took his vengeance on the lowly storyteller. As if that will make his wife faithful to him.”

“Try to sleep,” I told him. “Rest is what you need.”

He shook his head and the cloth slid off, revealing two raw burns where his eyes had been. I went to replace the cloth, saw that it was getting dry, and smeared more poultice on it from the bowl at my side.

“You might as well slit my throat, Master. I’ll be of no use to you now. No use to anyone.”

“There’s been enough blood spilled here,” I said.

“No use,” he muttered as I put the soothing cloth over the place where his eyes had been. Then I propped up his head again and gave him more wine. He soon fell asleep once more.

Magro stuck his head into my tent. “Lukka, King Odysseos wants to see you.”

I stepped out into the brightening morning. Commanding Magro to watch over my sons and the sleeping Poletes, I walked swiftly to Odysseos’ boat and clambered up the rope ladder that dangled over its curving hull.

The deck was heaped with treasure looted from Troy. I turned from the dazzling display to look back at the city. The fires seemed to have died down, but hundreds of tiny figures were already at work up on the battlements, pulling down the blackened stones, working under the rising sun to level the walls that had defied the Achaians for so long.

I had to step carefully along the gunwale to avoid tripping over the piles of treasure spread over the deck. Odysseos was at his usual place on the afterdeck, standing in the golden sunshine, his broad chest bare, his hair and beard still wet from his morning swim. He had a pleased smile on his thickly bearded face.

Yet his eyes searched mine as he said, “The victory is complete, thanks to you, Hittite.” Pointing to the demolition work going on in the distance, he added, “Troy will never rise again.”

I nodded grimly. “Priam, Hector, Paris—the entire House of Ilios has been wiped out.”

“All but Aeneas the Dardanian. Rumor has it that he was a bastard of Priam’s. We haven’t found his body.”

“He might have been consumed in the fire.” Like my wife, I thought. But I held my tongue. No sense making an enemy of this man who had taken me into his house hold.

“It’s possible,” said Odysseos. “But I don’t think it’s terribly important. If Aeneas lives, he’s hiding somewhere nearby. We’ll find him. Even if we don’t, there won’t be anything left here for him to return to.”

As I gazed out toward the distant city, one of the massive stones of the parapet by the Scaean Gate was pulled loose by a horde of slaves straining with levers and ropes. It tumbled to the ground with a heavy cloud of dust. Moments later I heard the thump.

“Apollo and Poseidon won’t be pleased with what’s being done to the walls they built,” I said.

Odysseos laughed. “Sometimes the gods have to bow to the will of men, Hittite, whether they like it or not.”

“You’re not afraid of their anger?”

He shrugged. “If they didn’t want us to pull down the walls, we wouldn’t be able to do it.”

I wondered. The gods are subtler than men, and have longer memories.

Odysseos mistook my silence. “I heard about your wife,” he said, his voice grave. “I’m sorry you weren’t able to save her.”

“I found my sons,” I replied tightly. “They’re safe with my men now.”

“Good.” He gestured toward a large pile of loot at the stern of the boat. “It’s your turn to select your treasure from the spoils of the city, Hittite. Take one-fifth of everything you see.”

I thanked him and spent the next hour or so picking through the stuff. I selected blankets, armor, clothing, weapons, helmets: things we would need once we left this accursed place. And jewels that could be traded for food and shelter once we were away from Ilios.

“There are captives down there, between the boats. Take one-fifth of them, also.”

I shook my head. “I’d rather have horses and donkeys. Women will merely cause fights among my men.”

Odysseos eyed me carefully. “You speak like a man who has no intention of sailing to Ithaca with me.”

“My lord,” I said, “you have been more than generous to me. But no man in this camp raised a hand to rescue my wife. No man helped to save my servant from Agamemnon’s cruelty.”

“You expect much, Hittite.”

“Perhaps so, my lord. But it’s better that our paths separate here. Let me take my sons and my men, and my blinded servant, and go my own way.”

“To where?”

It was my turn to shrug. “There are always princes in need of good soldiers. I’ll find a place.”

The King of Ithaca stroked his beard for several silent moments. Finally he agreed, “Very well, Hittite. Go your own way. May the gods smile upon you.”

“And upon you, noblest of all the Achaians.”

I never saw Odysseos again.

6

Despite my eagerness to leave Troy, Poletes was in no condition to travel. He lay in my tent all day, drifting in and out of sleep, moaning softly whether asleep or awake.

The camp was bustling, noisy, slaves and thetes loading the boats with loot, carrying the trappings from the cabins of the nobles to the boats. Women were lugging cook pots and utensils to the rope baskets that were being used to haul them up to the decks. Stinking, bleating goats and sheep were being driven from their pens onto the boats. The fine horses that pulled the chariots were led carefully up wooden planked gangways while grunting, sweating slaves pushed the chariots themselves up the gangplanks after them. Everywhere there was shouting, calling, groaning, squealing beneath the hot morning sun. At least the wind off the water cooled the struggling workers somewhat.

I put my men to gathering horses and donkeys, and a pair of carts to go with them. I gave them some of the weapons I had taken from Odysseos’ boat to use for trading. Most of them were ornamental, with engraved bronze blades and hilts glittering with jewels: not much use in battle, but they fetched good value in trading for well-shod horses or strong little donkeys.

As I stood in front of my tent surveying the Achaians breaking up their camp and preparing to sail back to their homes, I realized that I didn’t know where my sons were. I looked around the boats, asked some of the women busily toting loads. No one had seen them since sunup.

The five-year-old’s name was Lukkawi, I recalled, named after me since he was the firstborn. I had to search my memory for his younger brother’s name. Uhri, I finally remembered.

Where were they? With growing disquiet I went from boat to boat, searching for them, calling their names over the din and commotion of the camp.

I found them splashing by themselves in the gentle wavelets lapping up onto the beach, under the stern of one of Odysseos’ black boats. They looked up and froze into wary-eyed immobility as I approached them.

“Don’t be afraid,” I said to them, as gently as I knew how. “I’m your father. Don’t you remember me?”

“Father?” asked Lukkawi in a small, fearful voice.

“Where’s my mama?” Uhri asked.

I took in a breath and squatted on my heels before them so I could be closer to eye-level with them. I realized that their eyes were gray-blue, like mine.

“Your mother’s gone away,” I said softly. “But I’m with you now and I’ll take care of you.”

“Yes, sir,” Lukkawi said. He was accustomed to receiving orders, and obeying them, even though he was barely more than five.

Their faces were smudged with grime. The smocks they wore were filthy, tattered. I dropped down onto the sand and took off my sword. Both boys eyed it but made no move to touch it. Then I unlaced my boots and placed them carefully next to the sword.

“Let’s take a swim,” I said, making myself smile at them.

They made no move, no response.

Getting slowly to my feet, I said, “In the water. We’ll pretend we’re dolphins.”

“Mama told us not to go into the water,” little Uhri said in his high child’s voice.

“Not above our knees,” added Lukkawi.

Nodding, I replied, “That’s all right. I’ll hold you. We’ll look for fish.”

I scooped Uhri up in one arm; he was as light as a little bird. I looked down at Lukkawi and offered him my free arm. He hesitated a moment, then reached up and allowed me to lift him off the sand. Both boys clutched at my neck and I stood there for a brief moment, my heart thumping beneath my ribs, my sons in my arms.

And my heart melted. These were my sons. They trusted me to protect them, to provide for them, to show them how to become men. I felt a lump in my throat that I’d never known before.

“We’re going into the water now,” I told them, my voice strangely husky. “It’s all right. I’ll hold you. You’ll be safe.”

Slowly I waded into the water. Up to my knees. Up to my waist. When the boys’ feet touched the water they both squirmed.

“It’s cold!”

“No, no. That’s only the way it feels at first. You’ll get used to it and then it will feel warm.”

I held them tightly and moved very slowly into deeper water. Uhri let go of me with one hand and splashed a wave into his brother’s face. Lukkawi splashed back. In a few heartbeats they were laughing and splashing, drenching me and each other.

We laughed and played together. Before long the boys were paddling happily in the water.

“Look! I’m a fish!” Lukkawi shouted, and then he squirted out a mouthful of water.

“Me too!” cried Uhri.

I sat on the sea bottom, only my head and shoulders above the waves, and watched my sons playing in the water. It was strange. I hardly knew these boys, yet once they clung to me, once they trusted me in the water, I felt as if they were truly mine forever. My father had been right. Flesh of my flesh: these boys were my sons and I would protect them and teach them and help them all I could to grow into strong, self-reliant men.

When I told them it was time to get out of the water they both squalled with complaint. But when I said that I was hungry, they quickly agreed that they were hungry, too. They shivered as we walked back to the tents, despite the warm noontime sunshine. I stripped off their wet rags, rubbed them down with woolen blankets and found decent shifts for them to wear. They were too big, of course: Uhri’s dragged on the ground until I got one of the women to stitch a hem on it.

We ate with my men: chunks of broiled goat and warm flat bread. The boys drank water, the men wine. There was plenty of meat to be had, since the sacrifices of the previous night.

That made me think of Aniti again, and my guts clenched inside me. I told myself that there was nothing I could do about her. I had tried my best to save her and failed. Now I had my two sons to take care of. What’s done is done and not even the gods can unravel it. Yet my insides burned.

Until my mind pictured Helen’s incredible face and golden hair. What’s happened to her? I found myself wondering. Does she still live?

After our noonday meal I looked in on Poletes. He was awake, lying on his back on my cot, his eyes covered by a poultice-smeared rag.

“How do you feel?” I asked him.

For a few heartbeats he made no reply. Then, “The pain is easing, Master Lukka.”

“Good. Tomorrow we leave this wretched place.”

“Will you put me out of my misery then?”

The thought hadn’t occurred to me. “No. You’ll come with us.”

“I’ll be nothing but a burden to you.”

“You’ll come with us,” I repeated. “We might need you.”

“Need me?” he sounded genuinely surprised at the thought. “Need me for what?”

“To tell the tale of Troy, old windbag. When we come to a village the people will gather ’round to hear your voice.”

Again he fell silent. At last he murmured, “At least Agamemnon didn’t cut my tongue out.”

“His knife would have broken on it, most likely.”

Poletes actually laughed a little. “I have you to thank for that small mercy, Master Lukka.”

I grasped his knobby knee and shook it. “Rest now. Get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow we travel.”

“To where?”

I shook my head, although he couldn’t see it. “South, I think. There are cities along the coast that might welcome a group of trained Hatti soldiers.”

“And a blind old man.”

“And two little boys,” I added.

I spent the rest of the afternoon supervising my men as they assembled a pair of sturdy carts and a half-dozen donkeys to pull them. I would have preferred oxen, but they had all been sacrificed. We also had horses for each of us. The boys and Poletes would ride in one of the carts, with the food and water we had collected. Our loot and weapons were piled in the second cart.

The boys tagged along with me all the long afternoon, getting underfoot, asking endless questions about where we were going, how long our trip would be—and whether we would meet their mother on our travels. I answered them abruptly, tried to shoo them out of the way, but they never strayed more than a spear’s length from my side.

Once the tide came up, several of Odysseos’ boats put out to sea, pushed into the water by grunting, cursing men who scrambled aboard once the boats were afloat. I watched them unfurl their sails and head off into the sunset.

At last all was ready. We gathered around the cook fire as the sun went down and had our last meal on the beach encampment along the plain of Ilios. In the last rays of the dying sun I saw that Agamemnon’s vengeance on the city was far from complete. Troy’s walls still stood: battered and sooty from the fires that had raged in the city, but despite the Achaians’ efforts most of the walls still stood.

I brought my boys into my tent and made bedrolls out of fine Trojan blankets for them; they fell asleep almost as soon as they lay down. I stood over them while the shadows of dusk deepened. Their faces were as smooth and unlined as statues of baby godlings. All that had happened to them, all that they had suffered and lost, did not show one bit in their sleeping, trusting faces.

At last I laid out a blanket for myself next to them. It was fully dark now, and tomorrow would not be an easy day, I knew.

But before I could stretch out for sleep Magro called my name. I stepped out of the tent and he said softly, “We have a visitor.”

7

Standing in the lengthening shadows was Apet, in her black Death’s robe with its hood pulled up over her head. I sent Magro to his tent as I stepped up before her.

“You come from Helen?” I asked.

“Yes,” she whispered. And without waiting for another word she turned and ducked inside my tent.

A single candle burned beside my cot. It cast enough light to see Poletes lying there asleep, the greasy cloth across his eyes, the blood-caked slits where his ears had been, my two sleeping boys on the other side of the tent.

She gasped. “They talked about it in the camp …”

It was not Apet’s voice. I grasped her by the shoulders and pulled her toward me, then pushed down her hood. Helen’s bountiful golden hair tumbled past her shoulders.

“You!”

In the flickering light of the candle I saw that her face was battered, one cheek bruised blue-black, her eye swollen, her lower lip split and crusted with blood.

“Menalaos?” I asked needlessly.

Helen nodded numbly. “He was drunk. I did what he asked but he was so drunk he couldn’t become aroused. He called me a witch and said I’d cast a spell over him. Then he beat me. Apet tried to stop him and he knocked her unconscious. He says he’ll kill us both once we get back to Sparta.”

“How did you get away from him?”

“He drank himself into a stupor. I told the guard that I was sending my servant to find a healer. Then I left Apet in the cabin and came searching for you.”

Poletes moaned and shifted on the cot slightly.

Helen looked down at him. “Agamemnon did this?”

“With his own hand,” I answered, hot anger seething inside me. “Out of sheer spite. Drunk with power and glory, your brother-in-law celebrated his victory by mutilating an old man. And murdering my wife.”

“Your wife?”

“One of the victims of Agamemnon’s thanksgiving to the gods for his victory.”

Helen lowered her eyes. But not before I saw that there was not one tear in them.

“Your husband stood by and watched it all,” I said to her, my rage growing hotter. “His men held me at spear point while his brother did his noble deed.”

She nodded and turned away from Poletes.

“What do you want of me?” I asked her.

In a flat, almost hopeless voice, Helen replied, “You see how cruel they are. What monsters they can be.”

I said nothing, but in my mind I pictured again Aniti’s final moments: the terror she must have felt. The pain.

“He’s going to kill me, too, Lukka. He’s going to take me back to Sparta and kill me, but not until he’s had his fill of me. Then he’ll have his priests put me on the altar like a sacrificial sheep and slash my throat. Just as they did to your wife.”

Her voice was rising, her eyes were wide, but it seemed to me that she was not panicking. Fearful, certainly. But she was not frenzied; instead she was grimly seeking a way out of the fate that loomed before her.

I asked coldly, “What do you expect me to do about it?”

“You will take me away from this camp. Now, to night, while they are all sleeping. You will take me to Egypt.”

I almost laughed. “Is it the Queen of Sparta who commands me, or the princess of Troy?”

Something flickered in her eyes, but Helen maintained her composure. “It is a woman who has nothing to look forward to but pain, humiliation, and death.”

Like my wife, I thought. Like Aniti.

“Do you want me to beg you?” Helen said, a tiny hint of a quaver in her voice. “Do you want me to drop to my knees and clasp your legs and beg you to save my life?”

She was begging, I realized. In her own way, the most beautiful woman in the world was pleading with me to take her away from her rightful husband, a man who had just fought a war and conquered a powerful city to get her back. She was too proud to admit it, but she was beseeching me to help her escape her fate.

“I have five men with me, not an army. Menalaos will track us down and kill us all.”

“He won’t know I went with you,” she said, her words coming faster now that she felt some hope. “He’ll search the camp, the boats. We’ll be far from here by the time he realizes what’s happened.”

“Egypt is a thousand leagues from here.”

“But there are cities along the way. Miletus. Ephesus. Civilized kingdoms. Apet told me of Lydia, and of Phrygia, where King Midas turns anything he touches into gold!”

“Egypt,” I muttered.

“It’s the only truly civilized land in the whole world, Lukka. I will be received as the queen I am. They will treat me royally. Your men can find a place in the pharaoh’s army.”

I should have refused her. I should have flatly told her it was madness and sent her back to Menalaos. But in my mind a mad tapestry of vengeance was weaving itself. I pictured the fat, stupid, cruel face of Agamemnon when he discovered that his sister-in-law, the woman for whom he had supposedly fought this long and bloody war, had spurned his brother and run off with a stranger. Not a prince of Troy, but a lowly Hittite soldier. Not carried off unwillingly, but run away at her own insistence.

I saw Menalaos, too, he who had his men hold me at bay while his brother mutilated Poletes. He who beat this woman who stood pleadingly before me.

Let them eat the dirt of humiliation and helpless fury, I said to myself. Let the world laugh at them while Helen runs away from them once again. They deserve it. They deserve all that and more.

They would search for us, I knew. They would try to find us. And if they did they would kill me and my sons. And Helen, also, sooner or later.

My sons. It was my duty to protect them. I had come all this way to find them, to save them from slavery. What Helen asked would put them in danger, put all of us in danger.

And there was Helen herself. She was a queen, a woman of the nobility, while I was a common soldier. But she was willing to put herself in my charge, place her life in my hands. Her body, as well?

I shook my head to drive away such thoughts. Madness. I’m just a servant, as far as she’s concerned: a professional soldier who can help her to get away. Nothing more. I looked again at Helen’s face, so beautiful even though battered, her eyes filled with hope and expectation, innocent yet knowing. She was maneuvering me, I realized, using me to make her escape from these Achaian barbarians. Was she offering herself as my reward for defying Menalaos and Agamemnon? No, I thought. She expects me to do what she wishes because she’s a noblewoman and I’m trained to follow orders.

“Very well,” I heard myself say to her. “We’ll leave at first light.”

Helen beamed a smile at me. “I’ll stay here, then. With you.”

“You can stay here in the tent with Poletes and my sons. You’ll have to sleep on the ground.”

Helen nodded gratefully. “I’ll be back in a few moments,” she said, in a half whisper, then hurried out, pulling the hood of Apet’s black cloak over her golden hair.

I realized she was attending to nature’s call. I turned and looked down Poletes. He was stirring on the cot, muttering something. I bent low hear his words. “Beware of a woman’s gifts,” he croaked.

I frowned at him. “Now you utter prophecies instead of stories, old man.”

Poletes did not reply.

8

I slept poorly, on the ground outside the tent, knowing full well what lay ahead of us. What little sleep I got was filled with fitful dreams of Egypt, a hot land stretching along a wide river, flanked on either side by burning desert. The Hatti had fought wars against the Egyptians, in the land of Canaan beside the Great Sea. But Egypt itself no Hatti soldier had ever seen. My dreams showed me a land of palm trees and crocodiles, so ancient that time itself seemed meaningless there. A land of massive pyramids standing like enormous monuments to the gods amid the puny towns of men, dwarfing all human scale, human knowledge.

It was still dark when I decided I could sleep no more. Egypt. Far-distant Egypt. We would have to travel a long time, through strange kingdoms and hostile territory. To bring fair-haired Helen to Egypt.

Once the first gray hint of dawn started lighting the eastern sky I roused my men and got them ready to leave. After a cold breakfast of figs and stale bread we loaded my boys and Poletes into one of the wagons with Helen, muffled once again in Apet’s hooded black robe.

Then it struck me. “What about your servant?”

From inside the hood Helen answered, “I can’t go back for her, Lukka. She’ll have to remain behind.”

“But once Menalaos realizes you’ve gone …”

“Apet will say nothing.”

“Even when they put her feet in the fire?”

Sitting up on the wagon’s headboard, Helen was silent for a heartbeat. Then, “Apet knows that if I’m not back to her by sunrise I’ve fled with you. She has sworn to kill herself before Menalaos can even begin questioning her.”

I felt my jaw drop open. “And you’ll let her die?”

“She’s very old, Lukka. She would only slow us down.”

“You’ll let her die?” I repeated.

“She loves me,” Helen said, her voice firm, as if she had thought it all out in her head and made her decision.

I stared up at her. Helen avoided my eyes. “You said you loved her,” I said.

With a burst of impatience, she demanded, “What would you have me do? You’re a soldier. Will you invade Menalaos’ camp and steal my servant away? You and your five men?”

I had no answer for that.

Leaving Helen sitting in her black robe, I straddled the thickly folded blanket that served as a saddle and nosed my horse toward Magro, who was leading a string of three ponies.

“Go drive the wagon,” I told him, reaching for the reins he held. “I’ll take the horses.”

“We’re really going to Egypt?” he asked, smiling quizzically at me.

I nodded.

“With your woman?” Magro tilted his head in Helen’s direction.

“She’s not my woman.”

Still smiling, “Then who is she?”

I decided to evade his question, for the time being. “Will it cause trouble with the men? Jealousy?”

Magro scratched at his beard. “There’ve been plenty of women in the camp. Especially in the last two nights.”

“I don’t want the men dragging along camp followers.”

“The men are satisfied for now. We can move faster without camp followers, that’s for certain.”

I could see from the look in his eye that he was thinking I was already dragging our little group down with two little boys and a blind old man. And now a woman.

Magro shrugged and let his smile grow wider. “We’ll find women here and there as we march, I suppose.”

I understood what he meant. “Yes. Our passage to Egypt won’t be entirely peaceful.”

His eyes locked on mine. “I hope we can leave the camp peacefully.”

I made myself smile back at him.

So we started out of the Achaian camp on the sandy beach. Ships were gliding out onto the sea, colorful sails bellying out as they caught the wind, carrying the victorious Achaians to their home cities. Troy still stood, gutted and burned black, its walls battered but still standing, for the most part. The sun rose in the east as it always does while our little pro cession of two carts and a dozen horses filed slowly through the gate that I had defended against Hector and down onto the strangely quiet plain of Ilios.

A pair of young warriors slouched by the gate, their spears on the ground, gnawing on haunches of roasted lamb. They waved lazily at us as we passed. Helen stayed inside the first wagon, tucked down among the bags of provisions with my two sons and Poletes.

We forded the shallow river and turned south, where the land rose slightly toward distant bare brown hills. I took over the wagon and let Magro take the horses. The rest of the men rode easily, glad to be mounted instead of afoot, as usual.

As we climbed the rutted trail I turned back for one last look at the ruin of Troy. The ground rumbled. Our horses snorted and neighed, prancing nervously. Even the donkeys pulling the carts twitched their long ears and hurried their pace unbidden.

“Poseidon speaks,” said Poletes from the depths of the wagon, his voice weak but clear. “The earth will shake soon from his wrath. He will finish the task of bringing down the walls of Troy.”

The old storyteller was predicting an earthquake. A big one. All the more reason to get as far away as possible.

Then Hartu, riding at the rear of our little group, pointed and shouted, “Lukka! Riders!”

I looked in the direction he was pointing and saw a cloud of dust. Riders indeed, I thought. Probably sent by Menalaos to search for his missing wife.

I snapped the reins, urging the donkeys onward. Thus we left Troy.

9

As I had feared, our journey southward was neither easy nor peaceful.

The whole world seemed to be in conflict. We trekked slowly down the hilly coastline, through regions that the Hatti called Assuwa and Seha. Once these people had been vassals of the emperor; now they were on their own, without the armed might of the Hatti to protect them, without the emperor’s law to bring order to their lives.

It seemed that every city, every village, every farm house was in arms. Bands of marauders prowled the countryside, some of them former Hatti army units just as we had been, most of them merely gangs of brigands. We fought almost every day. Men died over a brace of chickens, or even an egg. We lost a few men in these skirmishes and gained a few from bands that begged to join us. I never accepted anyone who was not a former Hatti soldier, a man who understood discipline and knew how to take orders. Our little band grew sometimes to a dozen men, never fewer than six.

I kept anxiously searching our rear, every day, for signs of Menalaos’ pursuit. Helen tried to convince me that her former husband would be glad to be rid of her, but I thought otherwise. There were times when the hairs on the back of my head stood up. Yet, when I turned to search, I could find no one following us.

I did not sleep with Helen. I hardly touched her. She traveled as one of our group, watching after my sons when she wasn’t tending to Poletes. She never complained of the hardships, the bloodletting, the pain. She made her own bed on the ground out of blankets and slept slightly separated from the men. But always closer to me than anyone else. She wore no jewels and no longer painted her face. Her clothes were plain and rough, fit for traveling rather than display. It wasn’t easy, but I was determined to be her guardian, not her lover; too many complications and jealousies lay in that direction. If my coolness surprised her, she gave no hint of it.

Yet at night as I lay on the cold, hard ground I cursed myself for a fool. I knew that if I wanted her she would yield to me. What choice would she have? But I couldn’t take her that way. No matter the urges of my body, I could not force myself on her. Each night I felt more miserable, more stupid. And each night I dreamed of Helen, although sometimes her face changed to Aniti’s.

Poletes slowly grew stronger, and began to learn how to feel his way through his blindness. He was very good with my sons, amusing them for hours with his endless trove of stories about gods and heroes, kings and fools.

The boys were a constant source of joy for me. And worry. Too innocent to understand the dangers we faced, they played rough-and-tumble games whenever we camped. On the march they ran alongside our carts or begged rides on the horses, then returned to their wagon with Poletes or Helen. But even then they kept themselves busy turning empty flour sacks into tents, broken tools into magic swords. It never ceased to amaze me how little boys could turn almost anything into a toy.

I tried to keep them out of sight when we were in a village or town. And I insisted that Helen stay well hidden among the sacks and bundles in the wagons. She grew impatient, of course, as women will.

“But no one knows of me here,” she said as we approached the city of Ti-smurna. “We’re hundreds of leagues from Troy.”

I was sitting on the wagon’s highboard beside her, working the donkeys’ reins. Behind us, among the bales and baggage, Poletes was spinning a tale about Herakles to my two eagerly listening boys. The men were riding the horses up ahead of us and the other wagon was trundling along in the rear, with the string of extra horses ambling along behind.

I shook my head. “How do you know that Menalaos or some other Achaians haven’t come to this city in search of you?”

She was wearing a simple shift, and the long weeks on the road had thinned her face somewhat. Her flawless skin was coated with dust, but her glorious hair shone in the sunlight like a torrent of gold.

Helen laughed at my fears. “We left Ilios before Menalaos realized I was gone, Lukka. He couldn’t have gotten here ahead of us.”

“Couriers ride fast horses,” I said.

“We would have seen them on the road long before this,” she countered.

“Ships travel faster still.”

That stopped her. She knew that Menalaos had dozens of boats to send in search of her, if he wished. Even though we had traveled along the coast road most of the way, the road cut well inland in several places. A boat could have passed and we would never have seen it.

But Helen replied, “He’d never send one of his precious boats to seek me. He’d never admit I’d gotten away from him once again. No, Lukka, he’s telling everyone he killed me and burned my body. He’s not trying to find me.”

I nodded wearily. It was no use arguing with her. She was determined to believe what she wanted to believe. But I still felt that uneasy prickling sensation that warned me we were being followed.

Ti-smurna was a sizable city, the largest in the land of the Arzawa, who had been vassals of the Hatti emperor until the empire dissolved in civil war. I decided to bypass it. The men grumbled; they had been looking forward to finding a decent inn and sleeping under a roof for a change. With women. Helen became angry at my decision.

“You’re being foolish!” she snapped at me. “You’re frightened of shadows.”

I said nothing. A man doesn’t argue with an angry woman. I let her rant. Poletes talked to her that evening, while we camped within sight of the city’s walls. I don’t know what he said to her, but she calmed down.

Lukkawi and Uhri goggled at the walls of Ti-smurna, and the towers of the citadel that rose above them. To them, it was a magic city of princes and warriors. To me, it was a well-defended city, but hardly impregnable. I could see where a determined army with proper siege equipment could break through those walls and take the city. I wondered what kind of an army they had.

I sent Harta and one of the new men, a Phrygian named Drakos who spoke the local tongue well, into the city to see what they could learn. They returned a day later to report there was no knowledge of the fall of Troy or of Achaians seeking Helen. Yet I worried about being pursued. We skirted Ti-smurna and moved on, southward, still following the coast road.

The rainy season began, and although it turned the roads into quagmires of slick, sticky mud and made us miserable and cold, it also stopped most of the bands of brigands from their murderous marauding. Most of them, at least. We still had to fight our way through a trap in the hills a few weeks south of Ti-smurna.

I myself was nearly killed by a farmer who thought we were after his wife and daughters. Stinking and filthy, the farmer had hidden himself in his miserable hovel of a barn—nothing more than a low cave that he had put a gate to—and rammed a pitchfork in my back when I went in to pick out a pair of lambs. It was food we were after, not women. We had paid the farmer’s fat, ugly wife with a bauble from the loot of Troy, but the man had concealed himself when he had first caught sight of us, expecting us to rape his women and burn what ever we could not carry away with us.

He lunged at my back, murder in his frightened, cowardly eyes. Fortunately, Magro was close enough to knock his arm away partially. The pitchfork’s tines caught in my jerkin and rasped along my ribs; I felt them like a sawtoothed knife ripping into me.

Magro clouted him to his knees while I sank against the dank wall of the cave, hot blood trickling down my side. The farmer expected us to kill him by inches, and Magro had drawn his sword, ready to hack his head off. But I stopped him. We left him quaking and kneeling in the dung of his animals.

Back at the wagons, Magro helped me take off my leather jerkin and the linen tunic beneath it. The tunic was soaked with blood and badly ripped.

“It didn’t go deep,” Magro said.

I felt weak, sweaty. “Deep enough to suit me,” I muttered, lowering myself to the ground.

Tiwa came up with clean rags and a bucket of water. Helen walked slowly toward me, her eyes wide, her lips trembling.

“You’re hurt,” she gasped.

“It’s not serious,” I said, trying to sound brave. “I’ve had worse.”

She knelt at my side and took the bucket and rags from Tiwa. Without a word she dipped them in the water and began to gently clean my wounds. It hurt, but I said nothing. The men gathered around and watched until Helen tied two of the rags around my rib cage with her own hands.

“The bleeding will stop soon,” Magro muttered. Then he and the other men turned away, leaving Helen and me alone.

“Thank you,” I said to her, my voice half choking in my throat.

She nodded wordlessly, then got to her feet and walked back to the wagon. My two little boys were standing there by the donkeys, staring at me. I waved them over to me.

I could see the fear in their eyes.

“It’s nothing,” I said to them. “Just a scratch.”

Lukkawi made a tiny smile. To his brother he said bravely, “No one can kill our father.”

I wished that was true.

10

The rains poured down day after day out of sullen gray skies. We were wet to our skins, our cloaks and clothing soaked, our bags of provisions sodden. The donkeys trudged through the mud slowly, grudgingly. The horses were spattered with mud up to their bellies. We were miserable, cold, our tempers fraying. Some nights it rained so hard we couldn’t even start a cook fire.

With the rain came fever. I felt hot and cold at the same time, shivering and sweating. That farmer’s dung-coated pitchfork probably carried the evil demons that clamped the fever on me. I grew too weak to drive a wagon, too dizzy even to mount a horse. I lay in the wagon among the soggy, rain-soaked bundles, alongside Poletes.

Helen tended me. She made a tent from horse blankets that kept most of the rain off us. I lay under it, helpless as a baby.

I had crazy dreams: about Aniti, but sometimes she was Helen, and then my two boys were grown men fighting on the battlements of Troy against me. Gods and goddesses appeared in my dreams, and always the goddesses had Helen’s face.

Despite all the rigors of our trek she was still beautiful. Even in my fever-weakened condition I could see that she didn’t need paints or gowns or jewelry. Even with her face smudged with mud and her hair tied up and tucked under the cowl of a long dirty cloak, nothing could hide those wide blue eyes, those sensuous lips, that flawless skin.

Slowly the fever left me, until one day I felt strong enough to take over the reins of the wagon once again. Helen smiled brightly at me.

“It’s a lovely day,” she said. And indeed it was. The clouds were breaking up and warm sunshine made the land glow.

Lukkawi and Uhri scrambled up to sit on either side of me and I let them take turns holding the reins for a few moments. It made them happy.

Poletes was gaining strength, too, and even some of his old quizzical spirit. He rode in our creaking cart and pestered whoever was driving to describe to him everything he saw, every leaf and rock and cloud, in detail.

In truth, the rainy season was behind us at last. The days grew warm, with plentiful sunshine. The nights were balmy and filled with breezes that set the trees to sighing. I felt strong enough to ride a horse again and retook my place at the head of our little column.

Magro nosed his horse up beside me. “You’re leaving Helen in the wagon?” A crooked smile snaked across his bearded face.

“She’s with Poletes and my boys,” I said, knowing where his sense of humor was leading and wishing to avoid it.

But Magro said, “Maybe I’ll go back and drive the wagon for a while. Show her my skills at handling stubborn asses.”

“Drakon is handling the wagon.”

“He’s just a lad,” said Magro. “Why, if Helen should smile at him he wouldn’t know what to do about it.”

“And you would, eh?”

With a grin and a shrug Magro replied, “I’ve had some experience with women.”

“With a sword in one hand,” I said.

“No, no—willing women! Back at the camp by Troy I had to fight them off.”

I laughed. “I can’t picture you fighting off willing women.”

“I didn’t say I won every battle.”

More seriously, I told Magro, “Listen, old friend. She’s a noblewoman. She was the Queen of Sparta. And a princess of Troy. She’s got no interest in a battle-scarred soldier.”

Magro nodded, a bit ruefully. “Maybe so. But she took good care of you when the fever had you down.”

“That’s because I’m the leader of this troop that’s protecting her. She’s got no passion for any of us. Her interest is strictly self-protection.”

Magro said nothing, but the expression on his face showed clearly that he didn’t believe me.

It was two days later that we first spied Ephesus.

We had spent the morning trudging tiredly uphill through a sudden springtime thunderstorm, wet and cold and aching. I was driving the wagon again and Helen sat beside me, wrapped in a royal blue hooded cloak. I had sent two of the men ahead as scouts, and detailed two more to trail behind us, a rear guard to warn of bandits skulking in our rear—or Achaians trying to catch up with us. I still could not believe that Menalaos had given up Helen so easily.

As we came to the top of the hill the rain slackened away as suddenly as it had started. The sun came out; its warmth felt good on my shoulders. One of our scouts was waiting on the edge of the muddy road.

“The city.” He pointed.

Ephesus lay below us in a pool of golden sunlight that had broken through the scudding gray clouds. The city glittered like a beacon of warmth and comfort, white marble gleaming in the sunshine.

We all seemed to gain strength from the sight, and made our way down the winding road from the hills to the seaport city of Ephesus.

Magro rode up beside our wagon. “There’re no walls around the city!” he marveled.

“Ephesus is dedicated to Artemis the Healer,” said Helen. “Men from every part of the world come here to be cured of their ailments. A sacred spring has waters with magical curative powers.”

I couldn’t help giving her a skeptical look.

“It’s true,” said Poletes, groping his way up to the front of the wagon to stand between Helen and me. “Everyone knows the truth of it. There are no walls around the city. None are needed. No army has ever tried to take it or sack it. Everyone knows that the city is dedicated to the goddess Artemis and her healing arts; not even the most barbarian king would dare to attack it, lest he and his entire army would fall to Artemis’ invisible arrows, which bring plague and painful death.”

That reminded me. “Artemis is a moon goddess, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” Helen said, nodding. “And the sister of Apollo.”

“Then she must have favored Troy in the war.”

“I suppose she did.”

“It didn’t do her much good, though,” Magro said, with a chuckle. “Did it?” His horse nodded, as if in agreement.

“But she’ll be angry with us,” I said.

Helen’s eyes widened beneath her blue hood. “Then we must find her temple as soon as we enter the city and make a sacrifice to placate her.”

“What do we have to offer for a sacrifice?” I asked.

Magro jabbed a finger at the donkeys wearily pulling our wagon. “This team of asses. They’re about half dead anyway.”

“Don’t make light of it,” Poletes insisted, his voice stronger than his frail body. “The gods hear your words, and they will punish mockery.”

“I will offer my best ring,” Helen said. “It is made of pure gold and set with rubies.”

“You could buy a whole caravan of donkeys with that,” Magro said.

“Then it should placate Artemis very nicely,” Helen replied, in a tone that said the matter was settled.

11

What ever its patron deity, Ephesus was civilization. Even the streets were paved with marble. Stately temples with fluted white marble columns were centers of healing as well as worship. The city was well accustomed to hosting visitors, and there were plenty of inns available. We chose the first one we came to, at the edge of the city. It was almost empty at this time of the year, just after the ending of the rainy season. Wealthier travelers preferred to be in the heart of the city or down by the docks where the boats came in.

The innkeeper was a lean, angular man with a totally bald head, a scrawny fringe of a beard, shrewd eyes, and at least a dozen sons and daughters who worked at various jobs around the inn. He was happy enough to have the ten of us as his guests, although he looked hard at my two little boys.

“They’re well behaved,” I told him before he could work up the nerve to say anything about them.

A look of understanding dawned on his face. “Your sons?”

“Yes. Treat them well.”

“Of course, sir. Of course. My own daughters will watch over them.”

Then he glanced at Helen, who had kept the cowl of her robe pulled up over her golden hair. “And your wife, sir?”

“She will require a room of her own,” I said.

He nodded and smiled knowingly. “Next to yours.”

I smiled back. “Of course.”

Gesturing to our two miserable, creaky wagons, the innkeeper said grandly, “Your goods will be perfectly safe here, sir, even if they were made of solid gold. My sons protect this inn and no thief will touch what is yours.”

I wondered how certain of that he would have been if he’d known that inside the boxes we lifted out of the wagons there really were treasures of gold and jewels from gutted Troy. I let his four sons handle our baggage, but I watched them closely as they stacked the boxes in the inn’s largest room. I chose to sleep in that room myself, together with blind Poletes and the boys. Helen disappeared into the next room, but almost immediately a pro cession of younger women paraded in, four of them tugging a large round wooden tub, others bearing soaps and powders and what ever else women use in their baths.

I frowned with worry over that. A stranger with an entourage that includes a blind old man and a golden-haired beauty. How long will it take that news to spread throughout the city? How long before it reaches the ears of Menalaos or one his men, even if they are half a world away from here?

But there were more immediate problems to deal with. A bony, sallow-faced girl presented herself and offered to watch my sons. I told her not to let them go beyond the inn’s courtyard. After endless days on the road, Lukkawi and Uhri were eager to explore this new and fascinating set of buildings and their yard. They ran off happily with the girl.

The city had whore houses, of course, and my men were eager to sample their wares. Once we got all our baggage stacked in my room I gave Magro permission to go.

“They’ll be back in the morning,” he told me.

“You go with them,” I said. “Try to keep them together.”

His heavy brows rose. “You’ll need someone to guard our goods.”

“I’ll stand guard. You go with the men and try to keep them out of trouble.”

Magro couldn’t hide the grin that broke across his face. “I’ll bring them back in the morning.”

I clapped him on the shoulder. “Enjoy the city. You’ve earned a night’s entertainment.”

“And you?”

Gesturing to the boxes stacked against the wall, I said, “I’ll guard our treasure.”

“Alone?”

“I have the innkeeper’s ferocious sons.” Two of the grown sons were big and burly, the other two slight and wiry, as if they had been born of a different mother. They hardly seemed dangerous to us, not after the fighting we had seen, but they were probably adequate to ward off sneak thieves.

“And I am here also,” said Poletes, from the bed where he was sitting. “Even without ears I can hear better than a bat. In the dark of night I will be a better guard than you with your two eyes.”

If you don’t snore, I thought.

Helen, in the next room, had commandeered two of the innkeeper’s young daughters to serve her. I heard them chattering and giggling as they hauled buckets of steaming water up the creaking stairs and poured them into the wooden tub for her bath. None of them knew who we were, of course. Or at least, I hoped that none of them had pieced together the significance of a golden-haired beauty traveling with a gaggle of Hatti soldiers and a blind man. As long as no one from Troy has reached Ephesus before us, I reasoned, we were safe.

Still, I was fretful. I paced my room as I munched on the dried figs and tough strips of dried goat meat that the innkeeper had sent for our early dinner.

I stepped out onto the balcony and saw Lukkawi and Uhri playing tag together while the innkeeper’s daughter sat on the ground by the stables, elbows on her knees, watching them. Their laughter lifted my heart. I realized that there is little in the world as happy as the laughter of children.

“Can you see the city?” Poletes asked, still sitting on our bed.

I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see it. “Yes. Right outside our balcony, beyond the window.”

“Tell me, what is it like?” He got to his feet, his arms stretched out before him, and stepped uncertainly toward the sound of my voice.

I took his arm and led him out to the balcony. The street on which the inn fronted ran downhill toward the wharves at the water’s edge. Poletes could hear the sounds from the street, but he begged me to describe what I saw. I told him of the temples, the inns, the busy streets thronged with people in colorful robes, the chariots and wagons rolling by, the bustling port, the billowing sails out in the harbor, the splendid houses up on the hills. Ephesus was a prosperous city, peaceful and seemingly secure.

“There must be an agora in the heart of the city, a marketplace,” Poletes said, cackling with anticipation. “Tomorrow one of the men can take me there and I will tell the story of the fall of Troy, of Achilles’ pride and Agamemnon’s cruelty, of the burning of the great city and the slaughter of its heroes. The people will love it!”

“No,” I said as I came in off the balcony. “We can’t let these people know who we are. It’s too dangerous.”

He turned his blind eyes toward me. The scars left by the burns seemed to glower at me accusingly.

“But I’m a storyteller! I have the greatest story anyone’s ever heard, here in my head.” He tapped his temple, just above the ragged slit where his ear had been. “I can make my fortune telling this story!”

“Not here,” I said softly. “And not now.”

“But Master Lukka, I can stop being a burden to you! I could earn my own way! I could become famous!”

“Whoever heard of a storyteller becoming famous?” I growled.

“You’ll be able to travel faster without me,” Poletes insisted. “At least let me—”

“Not while she’s with us,” I said.

He snorted angrily. “That woman has caused more agony than any mortal woman ever born.”

“Perhaps so. But until I see her safely accepted in Egypt, where she can be protected, you’ll tell no tales about Troy.”

Poletes grumbled and mumbled as he groped his way back to the bed. I stayed with him and steered him clear of the stacked boxes of loot.

As the old storyteller plopped down on the dusty feather mattress I heard a scratching at the door. Picking up my sword from the table by the bed, I held it by the scabbard and went to the door, opening it a crack.

It was one of the innkeeper’s daughters, a husky, dimpled girl with mistrustful dark eyes.

She curtsied clumsily and said, “The lady asks if you will come to her chamber.”

I looked up and down the hallway. It was empty, although anyone might be hiding behind the closed doors of the other rooms.

“Tell her I’ll be there in a few moments,” I said.

Shutting the door, I went to the bed and sat on it beside Poletes.

“You needn’t say anything,” he told me. “You’re going to her. She’ll snare you in her web of allurements.”

“You have a poet’s way of expression,” I said.

“Don’t try to flatter me.”

Ignoring his petulance, I asked, “Can you guard our goods until I return?”

He grunted and turned this way and that on the soft bedding and finally admitted, “I suppose so.”

“You’ll yell loudly if anyone tries to enter this room?”

“I’ll wake the whole inn.”

“Can you bar the door behind me and find your way back to the bed again?”

“What difference if I stumble and break my neck? You’ll be with your lady love.”

I had to laugh. “She’s not my lady love. I’ll probably be with her only a few moments. I have no intention—”

“Oh, no, not at all!” He hooted. “Just make sure that you don’t bellow like a mating bull. I’m going to try to get some sleep.”

Feeling like a schoolboy sneaking out to play, I went to the door and bade Poletes a pleasant nap.

“I sleep very lightly, you know,” he said.

Whether he meant to reassure me that no thief would be able to sneak in to rob us, or to warn me to be quiet in Helen’s room, next door, I could not tell. Perhaps he meant both.

I belted my sword to my hip and stepped out of the room, closing the door softly behind me. I waited until I heard the bar behind it slide into place. The hallway was still empty, and I could see no dark corners or niches where an enemy could lurk in ambush. Nothing but the worn, tiled floor, the plastered walls, and six wooden doors of other rooms. My men had taken three of them, I knew, but they were off in the city enjoying themselves. On the other side of the hall was a railing of split logs that overlooked the central courtyard of the inn and its packed dirt floor.

My boys were still playing in the courtyard; I could hear their shouts and laughter.

Very well then, I told myself. And I went to Helen’s door.

12

Feeling more than a little uncertain, I scratched at the smooth wooden planks of Helen’s door.

“Who is there?” came her muffled voice.

“Lukka,” I said, feeling slightly foolish.

“You may enter.”

I pushed the door open. Helen stood in the center of the shabby room, resplendent as the sun. She had put on the same robes and jewels she had worn that first time I had seen her alone, in her chamber in Troy. I hadn’t realized until this moment that she had brought them with her all this way. She’d probably hidden them under Apet’s black cloak that night when she asked me to take her away from Menalaos. In Troy she had looked incredibly beautiful. Here, in this rough inn with its crudely plastered walls and uncurtained windows she seemed like a goddess come to Earth.

I closed the door behind me and leaned my back against it, almost weak with the beauty of her. No one else was in the room; she had dismissed the girls who’d been waiting on her.

“Lukka,” she said softly, “you’ve saved my life.”

Somehow I managed to say, “You’re not safe yet, my lady. We’re still a long way from Egypt.”

“Menalaos must be back in Sparta by now, telling everyone how he killed his unfaithful wife with his own hands and burned her body as a sacrifice to his gods.”

“Or he could be following our trail, trying to find you.”

She shook her head hard enough to make her golden curls tumble about her slim shoulders. “Don’t say that, Lukka! You’re frightening me.”

I stepped toward her. “That’s the last thing in the world I want to do, my lady.”

“My name is Helen.”

My voice caught in my throat, but I managed to half-whisper, “Helen.”

She stood before me, warm, alive, breathing, her clear blue eyes searching mine.

“I owe you my life, Lukka,” she said.

Like a fool, I replied, “Apet told me about Prince Hector.”

Helen sighed. “Hector.”

“She told me that you loved him.”

“I still love his memory. But he’s dead now, in Hades with the rest of the House of Ilios.” She slid her arms around my neck. “And we’re alive.”

I looked down into her eyes and grasped her slim waist in both my hands. Our lips met.

And then I heard my two boys shouting to one another out in the hall. They pounded on the barred door to my room, calling out, “Daddy! Daddy!”

I twitched with surprise.

“Daddy! Open the door!”

Swallowing hard, I released Helen. “They’ll get frightened,” I said, apologetically.

A strange expression came over her face. She appeared puzzled, then angry, then amused—all in the span of a heartbeat.

Helen broke into laughter. “Go, tend to your little boys,” she said, giggling at me. “I can see that my charms are nothing compared to a father’s love for his sons.”

I felt my face reddening. “My lady … they’re only children.”

“Go, Lukka,” said Helen, her laughter tinkling like silver bells. “Do your fatherly duty.”

Shamefaced, I opened her door and stepped out into the hall just as Poletes opened the door to our room. The boys turned, saw me, and ran into my arms. And I was happy to hold them—even with Helen standing alone in her room, laughing. At me.

13

I hardly slept at all that night. Poletes snored beside me on the featherbed, Lukkawi and Uhri slept peacefully on the cots that the innkeeper’s sons had set up for them. I knew that Helen was on the other side of the wall that separated our rooms. Was she sleeping? Dreaming?

Strange thoughts filled my mind. I desired her, of course I did. What man wouldn’t? But did she truly desire me, or was she simply using her charms to keep me bound to her? She knew I could leave her here in Ephesus if I chose to. Leave her alone, defenseless, friendless and helpless in a strange land.

Do I love her? I asked myself. The idea struck me like a thunderbolt. Love her? A princess of Troy? The Queen of Sparta? Then an even wilder question rose before me: does Helen love me?

I lay there on the sagging feather mattress and wondered what love truly is. Women are for men’s plea sure. A wife takes care of a man’s home, bears him children, rears his family. But love? I never knew Aniti well enough to love her, nor could she have loved me. But Helen … Helen was different. What is love? I’ve put my life at risk, the lives of my men and my sons as well, for her. Is that love? Could she possibly love me? I knew it was impossible. Yet I lay there in the darkness, wondering.

Time and again I thought about tiptoeing out to her room. Time and again I could not work up the courage to do it. Yes, courage. I’d faced armed soldiery and never turned my back. I’d followed the emperor’s orders even when they sent me far from my home. But facing Helen was a different matter.

A thousand thoughts raced through my mind. I saw Aniti’s face, sad-eyed, watching me from the gray mists of Hades. I had failed her, and now Helen had offered herself to me. The most beautiful woman in the world. What would happen if I bedded her? We still had months of travel ahead of us, through strange and unknown territory. How could I maintain discipline if we were lovers? The men would want women of their own, surely, and our little troop would bog down into a caravan of women. And my sons. It was difficult enough traveling with them. If the men took women we’d soon enough have pregnancies to deal with. And then babies.

Then there was Poletes. He wanted to stay in Ephesus, but I couldn’t risk allowing him to tell the tale of Troy to these people. They would soon realize that the Hatti soldiers in their midst were harboring Helen, Queen of Sparta, princess of Troy.

Helen. Was she really offering herself to me? A common soldier? A man with two young sons clinging to him? If I told her that I loved her, would she be pleased? Or would she scorn me? Then I realized that she must be lonely. After the mortal peril she’d been through, after seeing the man she loved spitted on Achilles’ spear, after watching Troy and its entire royal family destroyed, she was alone in the world, without a love, without a friend, without even the servant she had known since childhood.

She didn’t love me, of that I was certain. She couldn’t. It was impossible. But she needed me, and she knew that the best way to keep me loyal to her was through her body. Poletes had been right: she’ll snare me in her web of allurements. Or try to.

I watched the nearly full moon sink behind the darkened temple roofs before I closed my eyes in troubled sleep. It seemed merely a moment later when I felt Poletes get out of the bed, coughing and groaning.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I’m old.” And he reached under the bed for the chamber pot.

Morning came bright and clear, the sky an almost cloudless blue. We were all up early and trooped down to the inn’s tavern for a breakfast of yogurt and honey, followed by hot barley cakes. Magro and the men came dragging in, bleary-eyed but grinning and joking to one another about their night’s adventures. They joined us for breakfast and ate heartily. Helen stayed in her room and had one of the innkeeper’s daughters bring breakfast to her.

I sent Magro and two of the men back into the city to trade our worn horses and donkeys for fresh mounts.

“These old swaybacks won’t fetch much,” Magro said, as the men walked the animals out of the stable. I couldn’t tell which looked the worse for wear, the animals or my men.

“Probably not,” I agreed, nodding, “but get what you can for them and buy new ones.” I handed him a small sack that held some of the baubles from Troy.

As Magro and the two others left, with the string of animals plodding slowly behind them, the innkeeper came bustling up to me.

“My lord,” he said grandly, “may I ask how do you intend to settle your account?”

He’d seen me hand the sack to Magro and now he wanted his own payoff.

I clasped him by the shoulder and walked him back toward the tavern. “I have little coin,” I explained, “but this should cover our debt to you, don’t you think?” And I pulled from the purse on my belt one of the jeweled rings I’d been carrying.

His eyes flashed wide momentarily, but he quickly covered his delight. Holding the ring up to the sunlight, where its emeralds flashed brightly, he couldn’t help but smile.

“This will do very nicely, my lord,” he said. “It will fetch a fine price at the agora.”

I thought for a moment about going down to the marketplace and converting a few more of our baubles into coin.

“And how long do you plan to stay with us, sir?” asked the landlord.

I made myself shrug. “A few days, perhaps less, perhaps longer.”

He bobbed his head up and down. “My inn is at your disposal, sir. Would you like to have one of my daughters tend to your children this day?”

“I think not. I want to see the city, and I know they’ll be curious about it also.”

“As you wish, my lord.”

I could see the thoughts running through his greedy mind. If I could pull a precious emerald ring out of my purse, what other treasures might I have in those boxes that we had carried up to my room? I realized that I couldn’t leave my room unguarded.

I detailed Hartu and Drako to stay at the inn and protect our goods. “Wear your swords,” I commanded them. “Let these busybodies see that you’re armed.”

They nodded blearily, their eyes bloodshot. I had to make an effort not to laugh at them. “You can stay in my room with the baggage and take turns napping. But wear your swords when you come out here.”

Then Helen came down, muffled in her royal-blue cloak. As if nothing had happened between us the previous day, she asked me, “Are we going to see the city?”

“We are,” I replied.

14

We made an odd pro cession as we walked through the streets of Ephesus: Helen, Poletes, my two children and I—plus Sukku, one of the Hatti soldiers we had picked up along our route from Troy.

Still muffled in her hooded cloak, Helen walked at my side. On my other side Poletes, strong enough now to walk, had tied a scarf of white silk across his useless eyes. He carried a walking stick, and was learning to tap out the ground ahead of him so that he could walk by himself. Still, he never strayed more than an arm’s length from me.

Lukkawi and Uhri ran ahead along the narrow, crooked streets, poking their heads into every doorway, chasing after every alley cat they saw, laughing and happy to be able to give free rein to their childish high spirits. Sukku plodded along behind them and never let them out of his sight.

Soon the streets widened into broad avenues paved with marble, which opened onto grand plazas flanked by gracious houses and shops bearing wares from Crete, Egypt, Babylon, even fabled India.

I saw only a few beggars on those avenues, although there were mimes and acrobats and other performers in each of the plazas, entertaining the people who, from their dress, seemed to come from the four corners of the world.

Ephesus was truly a city of culture and comfort, rich with marble temples and centers for healers to ply their craft and even a library that stored scrolls of knowledge. We walked slowly through the plazas and the growing throngs of people crowding into them. Then we came to the city’s central marketplace, and passed a knot of people gathered around an old man who was squatting on the marble paving blocks, weaving a spell of words, while his listeners tossed an occasional coin his way.

“A storyteller!” Poletes yelped.

“Not here,” I whispered to him.

“Let me stay and listen, Master Lukka,” he begged. “Please! I swear that I won’t speak a word.”

Reluctantly I allowed it. I thought I could trust Poletes’ word; it was his heart that I worried about. He was a storyteller, it was in his blood. How long could he remain silent when he had the grandest story of all time to tell to the crowd?

I decided to give him an hour to himself while Helen and I browsed through the shops and stalls of the marketplace. Even with Sukku watching after them, I kept an eye on little Uhri and Lukkawi; they kept disappearing into the crowds and then popping into sight again. Helen seemed delightedly happy to be fingering fine cloth and examining decorated pottery, bargaining with the shopkeepers and then walking on, buying nothing. I shrugged and followed her at a distance, my eyes always searching out my two boys.

The ground rumbled. A great gasping cry went up from the crowd in the marketplace. A few pots tottered off their shelves and smashed to the ground. The world seemed to sway giddily, sickeningly. In a few heartbeats the rumbling ceased and all returned to normal. For a moment the people were absolutely silent. Then a bird chirped and everyone began talking at once, with the kind of light fast banter that comes with a surge of relief from sudden terror.

My sons came running up to me, with Sukku trotting behind them, but by the time they were close enough to grasp my legs the tremor had ended. I assured them everything was all right.

Helen stared at me, her face white with apprehension.

“An earth tremor,” I said, trying to make my voice light, unafraid. “Natural enough in these parts.”

“Poseidon makes the earth shake,” she said in a near-whisper. But the color returned to her cheeks.

The marketplace quickly returned to normal. The crowd resumed its chatter. People bargained with merchants. My boys ran off to watch a puppet show. I could see Poletes across the great square of the market, standing at the edge of the crowd gathered around the squatting storyteller. His gnarled legs were almost as skinny as the stick he leaned upon.

“Lukka.”

I turned toward Helen. She was half-frowning at me the way a mother shows displeasure with a naughty son. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said,” she scolded.

“I’m sorry. My mind was elsewhere.”

“Watching over your boys.”

Nodding, I added, “And Poletes.”

Very patiently, Helen repeated, “I said that we could live here in Ephesus very nicely. This is a civilized city, Lukka. With the wealth we’ve brought we could buy a comfortable villa and live splendidly.”

“What about Egypt?”

She sighed. “It’s so far away. And traveling has been much more difficult than I thought it would be.”

“Perhaps we could get a boat and sail to Egypt,” I suggested. “That would be much swifter than travel overland.”

Her eyes brightened. “Of course! There are hundreds of boats in the harbor.”

I pulled Poletes away from the storyteller and we made our way to the harbor. Heavily laden boats lined the piers while bare-chested gangs of slaves unloaded their cargoes. The breeze off the sea carried the tang of salt air, although Poletes complained of the smell of fish. The boys ran up and down the piers, goggling at the boats, with their high masts and furled sails.

I saw that these merchant ships were different from the black-hulled boats the Achaians had used to cross the Aegean and reach Troy. They were broader in the beam and deeper of draft, built to carry cargo, not warriors; designed for commerce, not for war.

I began to ask about boats that carried passengers and talked with two different captains. Neither of them wanted to travel to Egypt.

“Too far,” said one of the grizzled seamasters. “And those Egyptian dogs make you pay a prince’s ransom just for the privilege of tying up at one of their stone docks.”

Disappointed, I was walking with Helen along one of the piers, searching for a willing captain, when suddenly Helen clutched at my arm.

“Look!” she cried, her eyes staring fearfully out to the water.

Gliding into the harbor were six war galleys, their paddles stroking the water in perfect rhythm. Each of them bore a red eagle’s silhouette on their sails.

“Menalaos!” Helen gasped.

“Or his men,” I said. “Either way, we can’t stay here. They’re searching for you.”

15

We fled Ephesus that night, sneaking away like thieves, leaving a very disappointed innkeeper who had looked forward to having us stay much longer.

As we rode into the hills and took the southward trail, I wondered if we could have appealed to the city’s council for protection. But fear of the armed might of the Achaians who had just destroyed Troy would have paralyzed the Ephesians, I realized. Their city had no protective walls and no real army, merely a city guard for keeping order in the bawdier districts. Ephesus depended on the goodwill of all for its safety. They would not allow Helen to stay in their city when Menalaos threatened to bring down the wrath of the Achaian host upon them.

So we pushed on, through the growing heat of summer, bearing our booty from Troy. A strange group we were: the fugitive Queen of Sparta, a blind storyteller, a half-dozen professional soldiers from an empire that no longer existed, and two buzzing, chattering, endlessly energetic little boys.

We came to the city of Miletus. Here there were walls, strong ones, and a lively commercial city. I remembered my father telling me that he’d been to Miletus once, when the great emperor Hattusilis was angry with the city and brought his army to its gates. The Miletians were so frightened that they opened their gates and offered no resistance. They threw themselves upon the emperor’s mercy. And he was magnificent! He slew only the city’s leaders, the men who had displeased him, and forbade his soldiers to touch so much as an egg.

We bought fresh provisions and mounts in the city’s marketplace. From my own hazy knowledge of the area, and from the answers I received from local merchants, Miletus was the last big city on our route for some time. We planned to move inland, through the Mountains of the Bull and across the plain of Cilicia, then along the edge of the Mittani lands and down the coastline of Philistia and Canaan.

But the sounds and smells of another Aegean city were too much for Poletes. He came to me as we started to break our camp, just outside the city walls, and announced firmly that he would go no farther with us. He preferred to remain in Miletus.

“This is a city where I can tell my tales and earn my own bread,” he said to me. “I won’t burden you further, Master Lukka. Please, let me spend my final days singing of Troy and the mighty deeds that were done there.”

“You can’t stay by yourself, old windbag,” I insisted. “You have no house, no shelter of any kind. How will you find food?”

Poletes reached up for my shoulder as unerringly as if he could see. “Let me sit in a corner of the marketplace and tell the tale of Troy,” he said. “I will have food and wine and a soft bed before the sun goes down.”

“Is that what you truly want?”

“I have burdened you long enough, my master. Now let me take care of myself. Release me. You can travel faster without me.”

He stood there before me in the pale light of a gray morning, a clean white scarf over his eyes, a fresh tunic hanging over his scrawny frame. I learned that even blinded eyes can cry. So, almost, did I.

“No telling of Troy until we are safely away from the city,” I warned, trying to make my voice growl.

We embraced like brothers, and he turned without another word and walked slowly toward the city gate, tapping his stick before him.

I sent the others off on the inland road, telling them I would catch up later. I waited half the day, then entered the city. Leaving my horse with the guards at the gate, I made my way on foot to the marketplace. Poletes sat there cross-legged in the middle of a large and rapidly growing throng, his arms gesturing, his wheezing voice speaking slowly, majestically:

“Then mighty Achilles prayed to his mother, Thetis the Silver-Footed, ‘Mother, my lifetime is destined to be so brief that ever-living Zeus, sky-thunderer, owes me a worthier prize of glory …’ ”

I watched for only a few moments. That was enough. Men and women, boys and girls, were rushing up to join the crowd, their eyes fastened on Poletes like the eyes of a bird hypnotized by a snake. Rich merchants, soldiers in chain mail, women of fashion in their colorful robes, city magistrates carrying their wands of office—they all pressed close to hear Poletes’ words. Even the other storytellers, left alone once Poletes began singing of Troy, got up from their accustomed stones and ambled grudgingly across the marketplace to listen to the newcomer.

Poletes had been right, I had to admit. He had found his place. He would be fed and sheltered here, even honored. And as long as we were far away, he could sing of Troy and Helen all he wanted to.

I went back to the city gate; my horse was still there, tethered at a hitching rail with several others. I gave the corporal of the guards a few coppers, then climbed onto my chestnut mount and nosed her up the inland trail. I would never see Poletes again, and that made me feel the sadness of loss.

Time and distance will soften your sorrow, I told myself. You have two little boys to look after. And the fugitive Queen of Sparta.

It was evening by the time I caught up with our two carts and my men. Lukkawi and Uhri ran up to meet me, and I swung them up onto my horse, laughing at the sight of them. Helen sat in one of the carts, watching with eyes that never wavered from me.

We made camp by the roadside as the purple of evening deepened into night’s darkness. We had a long, long road ahead of us. Deserts and rivers and mountains stood between us and distant Egypt.

The campfire slowly guttered into embers. My boys went to sleep in one of the wagons; Helen had the other to herself. The men rolled themselves in their blankets while I sat by the dying fire, on watch.

The night was chill. A solitary wolf howled in the darkness while the sad, lopsided face of the moon rode high above among scudding clouds. Stars twinkled up in the black bowl of night, like the eyes of the gods watching me.

“Lukka.”

I was startled to hear her voice, and cursed myself for a fool for letting her steal up on me. Some guard!

Helen was wrapped in that dark robe again, although she had let the hood down. Her hair glowed like gold in the pale moonlight.

“I’m glad you returned,” she said, sitting beside me.

“You knew I would.”

“Still …” She let the thought hang in the air. At last she said, “I was afraid that maybe … something could have happened …”

“Nothing could keep me from my sons,” I said.

“Yes. Of course.”

There was something in her voice, a questioning, a seeking. She lapsed into silence, her chin down, her eyes avoiding mine.

I heard myself admit, “And nothing could keep me from you.”

“No,” she whispered, her face still downcast. “Don’t say it. Don’t even think it. I bring nothing but death and ruin. I’m cursed, Lukka, cursed by the gods.”

“The gods of Egypt will love you better.”

“But Egypt’s so far away. I thought we could stay in Ephesus, but he’s searching for me! He’s after me!”

“He won’t find you. He doesn’t know we were in Miletus.” But then I thought of Poletes spinning his tale in the marketplace. Menalaos will know we were there soon enough.

“I’m afraid, Lukka. I’m frightened!”

Without thinking, without worrying about the consequences, I took her by the shoulders and pulled her to me. She buried her face in my chest, sobbing like a child. She wasn’t the Queen of Sparta now, nor a princess of Troy. She was a frightened woman fleeing for her life, dependent on my protection. She was the most beautiful woman in the world and she was in my arms, trembling with fear, needing me as much as I wanted her.

I got to my feet and lifted her into my arms and carried her to the wagon. There, amid the blankets and bags and boxes we made love. Not in a palace, not amid royal trappings on a beautifully decked wedding bed. On a cart that smelled of donkeys and sweat and the dust of long, hard travel.

The stars peeked through the tattered clouds and Artemis’ silver moon sank down behind the western hills while Helen and I made love, all other thoughts, all other cares, driven from my mind completely.

But in the gray half-light that preceded true dawn, as Helen slept in my arms, I knew that I would cross deserts and rivers and mountains for this woman. That I would carry her to the ends of the earth to keep her safe, to protect her against the vengeful Menalaos.

Thus our journey from Miletus began.