by Dan Simmons
For half an hour they allowed their horses to pick their way through the jumble of rock that stretched for two miles along the ridgeline that once had held mighty Troy. Not a single foundation stone was left. The divine magic that had taken Troy had sheared it off almost a foot beneath the earliest stones of the city. Not so much as a dropped spear or rotting carcass had been left behind.
“Zeus is powerful indeed,” said Penthesilea.
Achilles sighed and shook his head. The day was warm. Spring was coming. “I’ve told you, Amazon. Zeus did not do this. Zeus is dead by my own hand. This is the work of Hephaestus.”
The woman snorted. “I’ll never believe that little bumbuggering bad-breathed cripple could do something like this. I don’t even believe he’s a real god.”
“He did this,” said Achilles. With Nyx’s help, he mentally added.
“So you say, son of Peleus.”
“I told you not to call me that. I am no longer son of Peleus. I was Zeus’s son, no credit to him or me.”
“So you say,” said Penthesilea. “Which would make you a father-killer if your boasts are true.”
“Yes,” said Achilles. “And I never boast.”
Both Amazon and her white mare snorted in unison.
Achilles kicked the ribs of his black stallion and led them down off the ridge, along the rutted south road that had led from the Scaean Gate—the stump of the great oak tree that had always grown there since the creation of the city remained, but the great gates were gone—and then right again onto the Plain of the Scamander that separated the city from the beach.
“If this sad Hephaestus is now king of the gods,” said Penthesilea, her voice as loud and irritating as fingernails on a flat, slate rock, “why was he hiding in his cave the whole time we were on Olympos?”
“I told you—he’s waiting for the war between the gods and the Titans to end.”
“If he’s the successor to Zeus, why in Hades doesn’t he just end it himself by commanding the lightning and the thunder?”
Achilles said nothing. Sometimes, he had discovered, if he said nothing, she would shut up.
The Scamander Plain—worn smooth over its eleven years as a bat-tlefield—looked as if the ground had not been sheared, there were still the prints of thousands of sandaled men here, and blood dried on the rocks—but all living human beings, horses, chariots, weapons, corpses, and other artifacts had disappeared even as Hephaestus had described it to Achilles. Even the tents of the Achaeans and the burned hulks of their black ships were gone.
Achilles allowed their horses to rest on the beach for a few minutes and both man and Amazon watched the limpid waves of the Aegean roll up on the empty sand. Achilles would never tell the wolf-bitch next to him this, but his heart ached at the thought that he would never see his comrades in arms again—crafty Odysseus, booming big Ajax, the smiling archer Teucer, his faithful Myrmidons, even stupid, red-headed Menelaus and his scheming brother—Achilles’ nemesis—Agamemnon. It was strange, Achilles thought, how even one’s enemies become so important when they are lost to you.
With that, he thought of Hector and of the things Hephaestus had told him about the Iliad—about Achilles’ own other future—and this caused the despair to rise in him like bile. He turned his horse’s head south and drank from the goatskin of wine tied to the pommel.
“And don’t think I will ever believe that the bearded cripple god actually had the ability to make us married,” groused Penthesilea from behind him. “That was a load of horse cobblers.”
“He’s king of all gods,” Achilles said tiredly. “Who better to sanctify our wedding vows?”
“He can sanctify my ass,” said Penthesilea. “Are we leaving? Why are we heading southeast? What’s this way? Why are we leaving the battlefield?”
Achilles said nothing until he reined his horse to a halt fifteen minutes later.
“Do you see this river, woman?”
“Of course I see it. Do you think I’m blind? It’s just the lousy Scamander—too thick to drink, too thin to plow—brother of the River Simois which it joins just a few miles upstream.”
“Here, at this river we call the Scamander and which the gods call the holy Xanthes,” said Achilles, “here according to Hephaestus who quotes my biographer Homer, I would have had my greatest aristeia—the combat that would have made me immortal even before I slew Hector. Here, woman, I would have fought the entire Trojan army single-handed—and the swollen, god-raised river itself!—and cried to the heavens, ‘Die, Trojans, die!… till I butcher all the way to sacred Troy!’ Right there, woman, do you see where those low rapids run? Right there I would have slain in a blur of kills Thersilochus, Mydon, Astyplus, Mnesus, Thrasius, Aenius, and Ophelestes. And then the Paeonians would have fallen on me from the rear and I would have killed them all as well. And there, across the river on the Trojan side, I would have killed the ambidexterous Asteropaeus, my one Pelian-ash spearcast to his two. We both miss, but I hack the hero down with my sword while he’s trying to wrest my great spear from the riverbank to cast again….”
Achilles stopped. Penthesilea had dismounted and gone behind a bush to urinate. The crude sound of her making water made him want to kill the Amazon then and there and leave her body to the carrion crows that roosted on the creosote bush’s branches near the river. The vultures’ daily feed of dead flesh evidently had disappeared and Achilles hated to leave them disappointed.
But he could not hurt the Amazon. Aphrodite’s love spell still worked on him, leaving his love for this bitch coiling in his guts, as nausea-making as a bronze-tipped spear through the bowels. Your only hope is that the pheromones may wear off in time, Hephaestus had said when they were both drunk on wine that last night in the cave, toasting each other and everyone they knew, raising the big two-handled cups and confiding in each other in the way only brothers or drunks can do.
When the Amazon was remounted, Achilles led the way across the Scamander, the horses stepping carefully. The water was no more than knee deep at its deepest. He turned south.
“Where are we going?” demanded Penthesilea. “Why are we leaving this place? What do you have in mind? Do I get a vote on this or will it always be the mighty Achilles deciding every little thing? Don’t think I’ll follow you blindly, son of Peleus. I may not follow you at all.”
“We’re hunting for Patroclus,” Achilles said without turning in his saddle.
“What?”
“We’re hunting for Patroclus.”
“Your friend? That queer-boy fruit friend of yours? Patroclus is dead. Athena killed him. You saw it and said so yourself. You started a war with the gods because of it.”
“Hephaestus says that Patroclus is alive,” said Achilles. His hand was on the hilt of his sword, his knuckles white, but he did not draw the weapon. “Hephaestus says that he did not include Patroclus in the blue beam when he gathered up all the others on earth, nor when he sent Ilium away forever. Patroclus is alive and out there somewhere over the sea and we shall find him. It shall be my quest.”
“Oh, well, Hephaestus says,” jeered the Amazon. “Whatever Hephaestus says has to be true now, doesn’t it? The runty crippled bastard couldn’t be lying to you, now could he?”
Achilles said nothing. He was following the old road south along the coast, this road that had been trod by so many Trojan-bred horses over the centuries and followed north more recently by so many of the Trojan allies he’d helped to kill.
“And Patroclus out there alive somewhere over the sea,” parodied Penthesilea. “Just how in Hades’ name are we supposed to get over the sea, son of Peleus? And which sea, anyway?”
“We’ll find a ship,” said Achilles without turning to look back at her. “Or build one.”
Someone snorted, either the Amazon or her mare. She’d obviously stopped following him—Achilles heard only his own horse’s shoes on stone—and she raised her voice so that he could hear her. “What are we now, bleeding shipbuilders? Do you know how t
o build a ship, O fleet-footed mankiller? I doubt it. You’re good at being fleet-footed and at killing men—and Amazons who are twice your better—not at building anything. I bet you’ve never built anything in your useless life… have you? Have you? Those calluses I see are from holding spears and wine goblets, not from… son of Peleus! Are you listening to me?”
Achilles had ridden fifty feet on. He did not look back. Penthesilea’s huge white mare stood where she had reined her in, but it now pawed the ground in confusion, wanting to join the stallion ahead.
“Achilles, damn you! Don’t just assume that I’m going to follow you! You don’t even know where you’re going, do you? Admit it!”
Achilles rode on, his eyes fixed on the hazy line of hills on the horizon line near the sea far, far, far to the south. He was getting a terrible headache.
“Don’t just take it for granted that… gods damn you!” shouted Penthesilea as Achilles and his stallion kept moving slowly away, a hundred yards now. The bastard son of Zeus did not look back.
One of the vultures on the shrub-tree by the holy Xanthes flapped its way into the sky, circling the now-empty battlefield once, its kin-of-the-eagle eye noting that not even the ashes of the corpse fires—usually a place to find a midday morsel—remained.
The vulture flapped south. It circled three thousand feet over the two living horses and human beings—the only ground-living things visible as far as the far-seeing carrion bird could see—and, ever hopeful, it decided to follow them.
Far below, the white horse and its human burden remained unmoving while the black horse and its man clopped south. The vulture watched, hearing but ignoring the unpleasant noises the rearward human was making as the white horse was suddenly spurred into motion and galloped to catch up.
Together, the white horse trailing only slightly, the two horses and two humans headed south along the curve of the Aegean and—lazing easily on the strong thermals of the warming afternoon—the vulture followed hopefully.
89
Nine days after the Fall of Ilium:
General Beh bin Adee personally led the attack on Paris Crater, using the dropship as his command center while more than three hundred of his best Beltvec troopers roped and repellored down into the blue-ice-hive city from six hornet fighters.
General bin Adee had not been in favor of joining this fight on Earth—his advice had been to choose no one’s side—but the Prime Integrators had decided and their decision was final. His job was to find and destroy the creature named Setebos. General bin Adee’s advice then had been to nuke the blue-ice cathedral above Paris Crater from orbit—it was the only way to be sure to get the Setebos thing, he’d explained—but the Prime Integrators had rejected his advice.
Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo led the primary assault team. After the other ten teams had roped down and blasted through the outer surface of the blue-iced city, establishing a perimeter and confirming it over tactical comm—the thing could not escape now—Mep Ahoo and his twenty-five picked rockvec troopers jumped from the primary hornet hovering at three thousand meters, activated their repellors at just the last second, used shaped charges to blow a hole in the roof of the blue-ice cathedral dome, and roped in—their fastlines anchored from pitons driven into the blue ice itself.
“It’s empty,” radioed Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo. “No Setebos.”
General bin Adee could see that himself on the images sent back from the twenty-six troopers’ nanotransmitters and suitcams. “Grid and search,” he commanded on the prime tactical band.
Reports were coming in now from all perimeter teams. The blue-ice itself was rotten—a fist could collapse an entire tunnel wall. The tunnels and corridors had already begun to collapse.
Mep Ahoo’s team returned to repellor flight and flew their grid search in the cavernous central place over the ancient black hole crater itself. They started high—making sure that nothing was hiding in one of the blue-ice balconies or high crevices—but soon were swooping low over the fumaroles and abandoned secondary nests.
“The main nest has collapsed,” reported Mep Ahoo on the common tactical channel. “Fallen into the old black hole crater. I’m sending images.”
“We see them,” replied General Beh bin Adee. “Is there any chance the Setebos creature could be in the black hole vent itself?”
“Negative, sir. We’re deep radaring the crater now and it goes all the way to magma. No side vents or caverns. I think it’s gone, sir.”
Cho Li’s voice came over the common band. “It confirms our theory that the quantum event of four days ago was an opening of a final Brane Hole in the blue-ice cathedral itself.”
“Let’s be sure,” said General Beh bin Adee. On the tactical command tightbeam, he sent to Mep Ahoo—Check all nests.
Affirmative.
Six rockvecs from Mep Ahoo’s primary assault force checked the collapsed ruins of Setebos’s central nest, then fanned out, repelloring above the collapsing cathedral floor to look at each decaying fumarole and sagging nest.
Suddenly there was a cry from one of the perimeter teams that had just penetrated to the central dome. “Something written here, sir.”
Half a dozen other troopers, including Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo, converged on the point high on the south wall of the dome. There was a terrace there where the largest corridor entered the dome, and in the wall of the dome where the corridor widened into the so-called cathedral, something or someone had written in the blue ice, using what appeared to be fingernails or claws—Thinketh, the Quiet comes. His dam holds that the Quiet made all things which Setebos vexes only, but He holds not so. Who made them weak, meant weakness He might vex. But thinketh, why then is Setebos here then vexed to flight? Thinketh, can Strength ever be vexed to Flight by Weakness? Thinketh, is He the only One after all? The Quiet comes.
“Caliban,” said Prime Integrator Asteague/Che from the Queen Mab in its new geosynchronous orbit.
“Sir, tunnels and caverns all checked and reported empty,” came a Centurion Leader’s report on the common tactical channel.
“Very good,” said General Beh bin Adee. “Prepare to use the thermite charges to melt the whole blue-ice complex down to the original Paris Crater ruins. Make sure none of the original structures will be damaged. We’ll search them next.”
Something here, said Mep Ahoo on the tactical tightbeam. The images flowing into the dropship monitors showed the troopers’ chest searchlights falling on a tumbled fumarole nest. All of the eggs in that nest had burst open or collapsed inward… all except one. The Millennion Leader repellored down, crouched next to the egg, set his black-gloved hands on the thing, then set his head against it, actually listening.
I think there’s something still alive in here, sir, reported Mep Ahoo. “Orders?”
Stand by, barked General Beh bin Adee. On his tightbeam to the Queen Mab, he said, Orders?
“Stand by,” said the bridge officer speaking for the Prime Integrators.
Finally Prime Integrator Asteageu/Che came on the line. “What is your advice, General?”
“Burn it. Burn everything there… twice.”
“Thank you, General. One second, please.”
There was a silence broken only by slight static. Bin Adee could hear the breathing of his three hundred and ten troopers over their suit microphones.
“We would like the egg to be collected,” Prime Integrator Asteague/Che said at last. “Use one of the stasis-cubes if feasible. Hornet Nine should shuttle it up. Have Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo stay with the egg on Hornet Nine. We shall use the Queen Mab itself as a quarantine laboratory. The Mab has divested itself of all weapons and fissionable material… the stealthed attack cruisers will monitor our study of the egg.”
General Beh bin Adee was silent a few seconds and then said, “Very well.” He opened the tightbeam to Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo and relayed the orders. The team in the blue-ice cathedral already had a stasis-cube ready.
Mep Ahoo sent, Are you sure
about this, sir? We know from Ada and the Ardis survivors what their Setebos baby was capable of. Even the unhatched egg had some power. I doubt if Setebos left one viable egg behind by accident.
“Implement the orders,” said General Beh bin Adee on the common tactical band. Then he opened his private tightbeam to Mep Ahoo and sent—“And good luck, son.”
90
Six months after the Fall of Ilium, on the Ninth of Av:
Daeman was in charge of the raid on Jerusalem. It had been carefully planned.
One hundred fully functioned old-style humans freefaxed in at the same second, arriving three minutes before four moravec hornets carrying a hundred more volunteers from Ardis and other survivor-communities. The moravec soldiers had offered their services for this raid months earlier, but Daeman had vowed a year ago that he would free the old-style humans locked in Jerusalem’s blue beam—all of Savi’s ancient friends and Jewish relatives—and he still felt it was a human responsibility to do so. They had, however, accepted the long-term loan of combat suits, repellor backpacks, impact armor, and energy weapons. The hundred men and women in the hornets—piloted by moravecs who would not otherwise join the fight—were bringing in the weapons too heavy to carry in during freefax.
It had taken Daeman and his team—humans and moravecs alike—more than three weeks to check and double-check the specific GPS coordinates of the old city streets, avenues, plazas, and junctions down to the inch in order to plot the hundred freefax arrival areas and designated landing sites for the hornets.
They waited until August, until the Jewish holiday of the Ninth of Av. Daeman and his volunteers freefaxed in ten minutes after sunset, when the blue beam was at its brightest.
As far as the Queen Mab’s surveillance and aerial reconnaissance could tell them, Jerusalem was unique of all places on Earth in that it was inhabited by both voynix and calibani. In the Old City, which was their target tonight, the voynix occupied the streets north and northwest of the Temple Mount, in areas roughly equivalent to the ancient Muslim and Christian Quarters, and the calibani filled the tight streets and buildings to the southwest of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aksa Mosque in areas once called the Jewish Quarter and the Armenian Quarter.