Torn from Troy

by Patrick Bowman

  As the last of them passed by my hiding spot, several Greek soldiers followed, laughing, long spears on their armoured shoulders, helmets under their arms. One of them lifted his spear to jab at an aging woman lagging behind the others. It was old Sifla. She staggered and nearly fell, but the others didn’t even lift their heads. She caught her balance and scrambled to catch up. Helpless, I closed my eyes, and the procession trudged off down the road toward the city gates.

  When the shuffling footsteps had died away, I struggled warily out of the culvert. After the noise and terror of the previous night, the city was eerily silent under a flat grey sky. The battle sounds were gone, but the smell of smoke lingered on the chill morning breeze like the remains of some vast burnt offering.

  Thirst and a desperate need to rinse off the sewer muck turned me toward a well nearby in Brass Pin Lane. My foot had stiffened up during the night, leaving me hobbling. Several times I had to duck into doorways to hide from Greek soldiers, but it was easier today. Last night they were invaders, swords out and alert for danger; this morning, they swaggered past with the easy confidence of conquerors. I wondered again how the city could have fallen so swiftly.

  I passed a dozen dead bodies, mostly soldiers slumped against walls where they’d backed up until they could retreat no further. Almost all were Trojan, armour already looted, their deep, savage gashes the work of the Greeks’ short swords. It wasn’t until I turned the narrow corner at Clutch Way that I stumbled across someone I knew.

  It was Spiros. A pool of dark blood stained the cobbles behind his head, matting his hair. I looked for some sign of struggle, proof that he’d fought back, but his wide-open eyes just stared up at me with what might have been surprise. One of the few stray curs that hadn’t been caught and eaten was sniffing around tentatively. I threw a stone to chase it away, catching its bony flank, but it just trotted off a few steps before sitting down to wait, tongue lolling.

  In a doorway nearby I found a brightly painted pot shard and slipped it under my friend’s tongue. His lips were cold and rubbery to the touch. There was nothing else I could do for him now, and I moved on. The dog watched me go.

  The well was in the middle of the square where Brass Pin Lane met Hog Run, and I watched from the shadows for a little while before approaching. The grey stone shops around the square had the usual sprinkling of ochre graffiti that had sprung up since the last rain. Pictures of Greek soldiers dying under Trojan chariots competed for space with angular naked women and a risky picture of King Priam and a goat. I wondered who had drawn it. Not that it mattered. If old Priam was still alive, he had more important things on his mind.

  The square was empty. I limped to the well and had drawn several buckets when I heard voices. Dropping the bucket back into the well, I hobbled for the opposite side of the square, wincing.

  Just off the corner was a spot where there had once been a narrow lane between two buildings. Carpenter Halitos, the crotchety owner on one side, had built a wall across it to keep us from cutting through into Dog Leg Alley. But he was no mason, and the badly-fitted stones had left a dozen footholds, making it a popular spot to spy on the girls drawing water at the well. I scrambled over it, smudging an ochre drawing of a Greek warrior with a rounded butt for a face, then turned to peer out between the gaps at the top.

  The soldiers appeared around the corner. Greeks, naturally. I hadn’t seen a living Trojan man since yesterday. There were three of them, heading for the well.

  One of them pointed at the ground with a shout, and I realized with a shock that my wet footprints on the cobbles led directly toward me. As they started heading my way, I dropped to the ground and hobbled off down Bent Ox Lane, rounded the corner—and ran straight into a group of Greek soldiers looting a bronzework shop.

  Chapter 5

  THE SOLDIERS REACTED instantly. One of them grabbed me by the shoulders and Expertly kicked my legs out from under me, dropping me face-down onto the cobbles. A knee crushed into my back, driving my breath out in a gasp as fingers grabbed my hair to yank my head up, a sharp point digging painfully into the side of my throat. From behind my head came a garlic-tainted Greek voice. “Got another one, Lopex. Too old to train. I’ll trench him here.”

  A surge of anger overwhelmed me. “Pretty brave of you, killing a boy,” I snapped. Thinking about the soldiers last night, I added, “Gods, you stink. What do you scrub with, dead rats?”

  There was a coarse laugh from a few soldiers nearby and the man on my back cursed. My head was wrenched up to expose my throat. I braced myself.

  But what came instead was a voice. “Hold, Ury.” A pair of battle-worn sandals stopped in front of my face. “Turn him.”

  The knee was lifted from my back and I was roughly rolled over. Two Greeks were looking down at me. The man pinning me down was hairy and unkempt, with dark, angry eyes and a bushy black beard that didn’t look like it had ever seen a comb. I had an instant to wonder why those deep eyes looked familiar before the other man spoke, his face upside down to mine.

  “Where’d you learn the hero’s tongue, boy?”

  I realized I’d spoken in Greek. “What’s it to you?”

  He looked at me for a moment. “Nothing. But it might keep you alive. Now answer.” His companion banged my head on the cobbles for emphasis.

  I scowled. “My grandmother. She was Greek.”

  “That could be useful. How old are you?”

  “Twelve.” I was fifteen, but recalling my father’s warning, knocked off a few years. Once again, I was glad to be small for my age.

  His gaze lingered on my hair for a moment. Straight and black like Mela’s, it was almost as unusual as our grey eyes. Finally, he nodded. “You’ll do. Feel like being useful, Trojan?”

  “Lopex, you heard what the little filth said to me,” the angry-eyed man growled. “He’ll be trouble. I say trench him now.”

  The other man spoke, his voice low and even. “I heard him, Ury. His mind is quick, and his Greek is good.” He knelt down beside my head. “Your choice, boy. Decide now.”

  The thought of helping these butchers made me sick. An angry retort was rising to my lips when I caught a glint of sunlight off Ury’s dagger as he shifted his grip. Self-preservation broke through for a heartbeat, and I looked up at the shorter man and nodded.

  Ury grunted angrily.

  “I’ve decided, Ury. But if he doesn’t work out, you can have him.” The second man turned away to supervise the men looting the shop.

  “Right, then,” Ury said, turning back to me with a disappointed scowl. “You heard him. Lopex owns you now. You do what he says. Whatever he says. And if you ever even raise a finger against a free man, you’ll be dead before your next breath. Got that, boy?”

  I nodded. He grabbed me by the hair and slammed my head against the cobbles again. “What was that?”

  “I got that,” I muttered. “Sir.”

  “That’s right you do. When a free man speaks to you, you answer. Now tell me your name, boy.”

  “Alexias. I mean, Alexias, sir.” I corrected myself, hating it.

  He put his lips down beside my ear. “If you ever speak to me again like you just did now, you little skatophage, I’ll cut out your tongue before you can take another step.” He smashed my head on the ground once again and hauled me to my feet by my hair. “Right, Lopex,” he called. “Your Trojan filth is ready.”

  The other man walked over, and I got a better look at him. He didn’t look that tall, slightly shorter than the hulking soldiers around him. His dark, pointed beard, shot through with flecks of silver, was well combed and trimmed close to a hard jaw. Despite his stature, he had broad, powerful shoulders outlined beneath a worn but finely woven chiton, and thick, hairy legs, slightly bowed. He reminded me a little of a monkey I’d once seen on a sailor’s shoulder. Except for his eyes. Their proud gaze openly dared the world to hand him something that he couldn’t hand back in knots.

  He looked me over for a moment, his arms folded a
cross his chest. “You say your grandmother was Greek, boy?”

  I took a deep breath. “Yes,” I said, gritting my teeth as I added, “master.” He continued to look at me until I added, “Elena of Patras.”

  He glanced away as one of his men came and spoke to him, gesturing back at the cart now creaking under a load of polished brass plate. “Well, boy, your first task is to find a route through the city to the main gate, one we can bring this cart through. And boy?” he added as an afterthought, picking up a large bow and slinging it across his shoulder. “Stay close. Don’t look like you’re trying to escape.” One of his men gave a guttural laugh.

  I looked at the cart. “What, that?” I broke off at his expressionless glance and began again. “I mean, um, master, with that cart the quickest way is up Hog Run to Temple Street, then down King’s Way to the gate.” He gestured at me to lead, and I started back out the alley.

  Behind me, the cart began to rattle over the cobblestones. I glanced back. He had two men pulling it by its shafts and three more pushing. It would be easy to escape; I knew the city, and they hadn’t even tied my hands. I wondered why not.

  I kept my eye open for a chance to bolt, but we were going too slowly. Every few paces we had to stop to drag bodies out of the way of the wheel. Many of the bodies were men in bits of Trojan armour, their gaping wounds a sign that they’d died in battle. At least as many, mostly older men, wore the clothes they’d had on for the festival. Some had been cut down as they ran or backed against a wall and executed, but many still lay where they’d passed out in the street after last night’s party, stabbed in their sleep.

  As I rounded the last sharp corner leading into King Priam Square, a noise caught my ear. A short distance ahead, a member of the city’s elite Ilian Guard was kneeling over a body beside the wall, his face in his hands. He looked up at my approach, his cheeks wet, and I shook my head for silence and jerked a thumb behind me toward the Greeks, just emerging into the square. I glanced back to see if they’d noticed him, and when I turned around again, he had vanished.

  As I passed the body he had been kneeling at, a sprawling, curly-haired Trojan soldier with his jaw slashed off, it twitched and heaved to one side. I sprang back as the Ilian guardsman erupted from beneath the corpse. He leapt to his feet and rushed past me, his eyes burning with a manic hatred, spear levelled at the Greeks behind me.

  He didn’t even get close. An arrow buzzed through the air toward him, sank into his throat—and shot out the back of his neck, landing with a clatter on the cobbles on the far side of the square. Hands clutching his throat, he gurgled blood for a moment, staggered, and collapsed.

  Lopex was standing behind the cart, his bow in his hands. I stared, astonished. Maybe the gods could do it, but no mortal I’d ever heard of could shoot an arrow right through a man, even at close range. He hadn’t even taken time to aim. His men were grinning openly. I shuddered, thinking about how I’d been planning to run. No one could outrun a bolt from a bow in those hands. He jerked his head for me to continue.

  The metallic smell of blood assaulted me as we moved into the square. The worst of last night’s fighting must have been here. On the far side, the Scaean gates sagged wide open. Bodies were everywhere, the cobbles underfoot sticky with so much blood that it was still congealing. Meat rotted quickly in this heat, and the square was already alive with the buzz of flies in the afternoon sun. Near the east side of the square was something huge and wooden. I blinked, trying to make it out against the glare. Lying on its side and mostly burnt, what remained looked like part of a giant wooden bull. Or a horse. I shook my head.

  The Greeks behind me cursed as they spotted fallen comrades, but Lopex overrode them. “We won’t leave them. But first we must get this wagon down to the ship. Would the dead ask us to risk losing the treasure we fought for? We’ll prepare a hero’s pyre for the fallen once these pickings are safe on board.”

  It was late afternoon when I passed through the massive wooden gates of Troy. The huge bronze insignia of a lion on one gate glared down at me while the sad-eyed owl on the other watched me leave. They looked undamaged. However the barbarians had gotten in, it hadn’t been through here.

  A cool gust of wind made me shiver. I’d peered over the wall a thousand times but never been beyond it. I looked back through the gates at the main square, wondering if I’d ever return. But there was nothing to return to any more.

  Drawn up on the beach not far away were the Greek ships that had vanished from the sight of the city watchtowers yesterday morning. Wherever they’d gone, it hadn’t been far. There must have been over a hundred of them, long and thin, lying like huge black daggers on the stony beach. Many had two oversized white eyes painted on the front and a high, carved tail at the back, curling like a scorpion poised to strike. Large groups of men were camped around the ships, and we passed several looting parties heading back into the city.

  When we reached the beach, I was corralled between two ships with some fifty other captives, a small fraction of the number the Greeks must have taken last night. Two girls about my age were huddled together in the shade of a hull, arms around one another, weeping. A three-year-old boy sat nearby, his arms around his knees, rocking back and forth and whimpering. His mother lay motionless beside him, gore leaking down her face from a massive eye wound, flies crawling on her cheeks. But most of the captives simply sat, staring numbly at nothing.

  A lone Greek soldier with a bulging lower lip frowned sourly down at us from the deck, fingering a battered bronze spear with his left hand. Folds of sunburnt skin creased into angry lines around his eyes. Sprouting from his right shoulder was a stump instead of an arm, but he could still chase us down if we tried anything. Besides, as a hawk-faced Trojan woman nearby snapped when she saw me eyeing him, “Planning to run? Where are your brains, boy? At least as slaves we’ll get fed. The Greeks are stripping the city bare. Anybody left behind when they leave will starve, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  Slaves? The word came as a shock. The thought left me brooding until a scent wafting from a nearby cooking fire caught my attention. The Greeks had driven the palace’s scrawny goats out of the city and were systematically slaughtering and cooking them. Seasoned with looted spices, the meat smelled incredible.

  Gods, I was hungry. I slipped between the soldiers clustered around the nearest cooking fire and was stretching to reach one of the bronze-tipped skewers when something smashed into my ear, sending me sprawling. I looked up to see a Greek soldier hulking over me. “Get lost, brat,” he growled, shaking the skewer at me. “Touch a free man’s meal again and I’ll kill you before you can taste it.”

  I sat up, rubbing my ear. “So what am I supposed to eat?” I shot back.

  His armoured toe cap smashed into my shin before I could dodge. “Answer me back, will you, slave?” he snarled. I rolled aside before his next kick could connect, and hobbled away. Silhouetted by the cooking fire, the soldier grunted into the darkness after me for a moment before returning to his meal. Resentful, I skulked in the gloom beyond the firelight.

  The crowds of Greeks milling around the cooking fires gradually thinned. As the last soldiers finally left the closest one, the hawk-faced woman sitting nearby scrambled up. I stood tentatively to follow her, a painful throbbing in my shin adding to the pain in my head.

  “Find somewhere else, boy,” she barked, the threads in her gown flashing in the firelight as she spun toward me. “Touch something here and lose a hand.”

  I stopped in dismay. Were my fellow Trojans against me too? My distress must have shown in my face, because after a moment she pursed her lips and sighed heavily. “Oh, all right, boy. Puny thing like you won’t eat much anyway.”

  Taking my cue from her, I began sifting through the embers. Cooking skewers were hard to control, and a few bits of meat had slipped off them as the Greeks ate, falling into the coals or onto the ground nearby. As we scrounged, she warmed up slightly. She had been the wife of an oil merchant recruited into t
he Trojan army about three years ago, but he had fallen beneath the wheels of a Greek chariot six months past. When I asked about her children, she snorted and glanced up. I dove for a scrap by her feet.

  “Children? Not likely. My Nico never had the stuffing for it. Tried for five years but got nowhere.” After a pause, she added, “’Course, I’m glad of it now. Who’d want their children ending up as slaves?”

  Gods, I wished she’d stop saying that word. As I chewed on a scrap of gristly meat, the sand gritty against my teeth, an animal howl rose from down the beach.

  Ury, the hairy man who had nearly killed me this afternoon, was holding his knuckles against his head, his face contorted in the light of a nearby fire. Before him, two men were carrying a helmetless Greek soldier on a long shield, his limbs dangling. As they set the shield down, the soldier’s lifeless head flopped toward me, revealing familiar deep-set eyes and a coarse black beard. I realized with a shock why Ury’s face had seemed familiar.

  Ury grabbed the smaller man. “Deklah!” he cried, shaking him violently. “What happened? What happened to my brother?”

  The man was being shaken so hard he couldn’t speak, and his sputtering only made Ury angrier. The taller man mumbled something.

  “What?” shouted Ury, dropping the first man.

  “Ury,” the tall man began nervously. “Brill was looting a house. In the alleys on the east side. He was bringing a slave girl out when—” he paused.

  “When what?” Ury roared.

  “There was someone else in the house.” The man hesitated. “He stabbed Brillicos in the neck as he came out the door.” I peered at him. He couldn’t think I’d done that. Could he? I listened harder.