by Kate Quinn
And I will not be turned into swine for anything or anyone.
Still, I’m surprised to find the area guarded only by one skinny, gray-haired elder.
I pat my hidden wineskin. “Here we go,” I whisper, signaling Diomedes to be ready in case I am unable to talk my way through.
I stagger out of the trees toward the guard, and he instantly tenses. “Announce yourself!” he commands.
“Help me,” I say in the accent of one of the western mountain villages as I half stagger, half hobble toward him. I’d perfected the local inflection with the help of a girl I’d taken in one of our early raids.
“Let me in! I need to make sure my family is safe.”
I am surprised the guard is so old, then I remember how the war has ravaged the population of their young men, too. “Why didn’t you come in through the gate you left from?” the man with thin arms asks in a scratchy voice.
“Because we were set upon by Achaean thieves,” I cry. “My daughter and the grandchildren were with me when the terrible-smelling Achaeans attacked—“
“Why were you outside the city at all this time of year? Everyone knows travel isn’t safe until the sea-wolves hole up in camp for the winter.” A snort. “It’s not entirely safe even then.”
“We were visiting the gravesite of my wife on the mount. We were ambushed on the way back—I tried to fight to give my family time to make it inside the gates,” I say, pointing to my bruised face.
“They must think me dead. When I woke, it was past curfew, and you know the guards will never open the gates after the sun sets. My poor girls will be frantic for me. Please... ” I make my voice croak and quiver, “a favor from one old man to another. This broken wall entrance is my only hope!”
I begin to choke up, pretending panic and confusion. The man sighs, moves aside, and shows me a crumbling vent in the walls—hardly more than a low slit—through which I must crouch.
I mutter my thanks as I pass through, all the while making sure I do not give the signal for Diomedes to attack—a crow’s caw. His job is to keep watch and help me through when I have taken my prize.
Once inside, my heart pounds like the hooves of chariot horses on hard ground. Breathe.
Although by now it’s fully dark, there are still plenty of torches in alleys and watch fires on the walls to light my way through the dense serpentine streets. I stumble along, pretending to be drunk, all the while sorely resisting the temptation to guzzle the contents of my wineskin to calm my nerves. Not only do I need all my wits about me, but this wine is critical to my plan.
To my surprise, I am not alone on the dark streets, as others seem to roam aimlessly. My kingdom is small and quiet—few, if any, of my proud people would be out aimlessly wandering or setting up for sleep in empty doorways. Indeed, there would be no “strangers” among us, yet everyone here seems to barely acknowledge each other.
The streets of Troy are narrow and twisted and filthy. They smell of urine and waste. A starved dog with patchy fur trots past me, stopping to nose piles of rot for something to eat. Babies wail. A woman cries. For a moment, I wonder if I’ve stepped into Hades’ domain, leaving me drowning in yet another wave of the familiar ache for my rocky, shining Ithaca.
My small kingdom on the cliffs. The bracing winds that whip past our craggy edges, washing the air clean with their briny, cooling spray. The calls of seabirds. The tinkling of goat bells from the jagged hills. We may be rustic, but I would never trade all of Ithaca’s charms for this... this monstrosity of packed humanity, filled with the cold stares of suspicious eyes, the sneers of strangers, and the reek of rotting garbage.
It is clear the people of Troy are suffering. I don’t know what these streets would look like in the bright sunshine—only that it appears already resigned to a life in the dark of the underworld, as if their end is inevitable. And it is. I must make it so.
After endless walking, I wonder if I’m traveling in circles for suddenly, all of the dingy alleys seem the same.
In the shadows of one dark passageway, I almost go headlong over something that darts between my feet. In a flash, my dagger is out.
“I... I am sorry, Grandfather,” says a young child, rubbing his head. A small fire from inside the boy’s hovel illuminates the child, a dark-eyed, curly haired boy who looks so much like my dreams of my son I am struck dumb with shock. The child quickly scoops up a wooden soldier, crudely painted in the colors of Hector’s honor guards.
Before I can say anything, a young woman rushes out the door and pushes her child behind her. “Go back inside,” she orders him. Turning back to me, she adds, “Please, we have nothing. We both go hungry tonight. I... I can spare some well water, though... ”
She thinks me a criminal. Or a beggar. Her voice, while clearly afraid, is light and sweet.
Penelope, are you alone and frightened, too, this night? Protecting our young cub alone because I stand in this accursed place?
“No, no,” I rush to assure her. “I seek nothing.”
She nods, walking backward into her tiny dwelling, the dirty bottom of a type of tall, stacked series of living spaces that reminds me of a crumbling dovecote. I hadn’t even known such structures existed until I came to these lands.
“Wait,” I call out, and she freezes. “Can you direct me to the temple of Athena?”
She blinks, her forehead crinkling. Her hair, while darker than Penelope’s, is thick and long like hers. Fool. Had I just given myself away?
“How do you not know where the goddess’ temple is?” she asks suspiciously.
“I am a recent refugee from one the villages on the far mount and am still confused by your streets,” I say. “In my dreams, the Palladion goddess came to me and ordered me to pray to her tonight. So you see, I must go to her. I do not wish to bring her anger upon us to any greater degree.”
Thankfully, she accepts what I say, nods and points, directing me to my left and to climb onto the ridge just south of the palace.
“I thank you. May the gods keep you safe this and all nights,” I say, bowing, and begin walking away. She releases a breath and shuts the door behind her. But I do not keep going. Instead, I move closer to her door and listen.
“Katu, what were you doing? Why were you outside at this time of night?” she scolds in a strained voice.
“I was waiting for Father,” the child says.
“But I have explained this to you... he is not ever coming... he cannot... ”
“He told me to wait for him right there,” the child says stubbornly. “He hasn’t come because you haven’t let me wait properly for him. Once he realizes I am on the stoop like I promised him I would be, he will come back.”
There is a long silence. “Your father is not returning because he serves the great Hector in the underworld,” she finally manages wearily, as if she’s had this conversation many times before.
“But he will come back for me because he promised,” the child insists. “He told me so in a dream.”
I can take no more and leave, my chest and breath squeezing hard. Was that the voice of my son, also waiting for me in the dark on the other side of the ocean?
By the gods, I must find a way to finish this! When Hector died, we thought we could make an end. When Achilles and Paris died, we thought the same. So many hopes, all shattered because we are unable to end this cursed war yet also unable to leave it.
I will find a way. Perhaps not with heroism, but I will find one.
The climb through winding streets seems endless, and it takes me longer to reach the temple than I’d anticipated. The guards at the citadel gates only let me in when I beg my need to pray. One look at my puffy, torn face and they must guess I’m no threat—just a stooped old man, probably beaten by one of their own—a frustrated soldier taking out his rage over the war’s endless impasse.
When I finally stand before the temple, all I can do is gape. Our rustic sanctuaries at home are to this gleaming masterpiece as a hare is to a chariot hor
se. Its pediment appears to scrape the underside of the night sky. Torchlight glimmers off of red-and-gold painted columns and buffed marble steps. A massive statue of Athena holds court in the center. According to a Trojan prisoner I interrogated, the Palladion is inside a small niche to the right of the main statue.
A priestess peels out from the dark like a shadow separating from a wall when I approach the main altar in the courtyard.
“Do you come to honor the goddess?” she asks, clearly blocking my way.
Hunching my back even more, I bow. “I do, priestess. For in my dream, Athena commanded me to come to her in the fullness of night.”
The priestess, like the guard, is old and quite thin. Are no youths left in Troy except children? The old woman examines me, taking in my clothing, my bruises, the dirt on my neck. “If you are looking for charity, we have nothing. Everything goes to the soldiers.”
“Oh no,” I say. “I need no charity. Indeed, I came bearing a special gift I consign to the goddess.”
She raises her eyebrows.
I pull out my full wineskin from under my cloak. “The darkest of wines sweetened with honey. From a hidden store in a mountain village.”
Despite her years of fierce control over her body and facial expressions, I do not miss the flash of hunger in her eyes. It seems the priests and priestesses, too, are starved for the basics in this dying city.
She puts her thin arms out, and I ceremoniously place the skin in her hands. We are so quiet I can hear the sloshing of the liquid inside the soft leather, still warm from being pressed into my side.
“The goddess thanks you.”
“I seek Athena’s guidance in dreams,” I say, asking permission to spend the night. To my surprise, few people are curled in sleep in the courtyard. I’d expected it to be full of supplicants seeking guidance and help for their suffering. Again the air seems heavy with a sense of despair and weariness.
“You may invoke the immortal lady there,” she says, pointing to an inner ring of rush pallets, closest to the temple, clearly reserved for wealthier supplicants. Despite my appearance, my gift has well pleased her.
At the dreaming mat, I move my arms and body as if in prayer and then, drawing my cloak around me like a blanket and my hood over my head, I curl up as if to sleep. Like the desperate few around me, I pretend to wait for the goddess to speak to me in my dreams. Through my hood, though, I bide my time, watching the elder priestess.
She murmurs invocations as she pours a bit of my wine directly onto Athena’s sacred altar. Smiling to myself, I can’t help but notice she is not very generous with the libation. With the same miserliness, she sprinkles some of the wine into the altar fire and even at the feet of the large statue in the center and the small figure in the niche that is my prize.
From there, she moves to a small stucco dwelling where another servant of the goddess awaits. A man, I think, from the shape of his shadow. She hands the skin to him, reaches out for its return, then drinks deep. Her flickering shadow fairly vibrates with relief and pleasure. Back and forth the skin goes, and I grin under the wool covering my face. I had guessed that good wine was scarce inside the city, so I pulled from Agamemnon’s best. The irony, of course, is that “Agamemnon’s best” is the strong, biting stuff we’ve taken from trading ships headed for Troy. I’d just gifted the priestess with her own wine.
Now I wait.
Images of the little boy holding vigil for the father that will never return prick at my heart. When my father left us to fight invaders or go on raids, I remember the excitement and terror, the fear that he would not return, and the overwhelming pride when he did. But I have not yet returned to my boy. What is left for him when he has never seen his exultant father return in victory? Only fear, only shame.
Closing my eyes, pretending sleep, I think of this generation of boys who have known nothing else but war. Achilles’ son Neoptolemus is one such. He joined us a matter of days after his father fell, indifferent to the passing of his sire, his eyes cold and dead as a reptile’s. A boy-daemon who kills while grinning with pleasure.
Despite all I have seen and done, I shiver at the memory of my last interaction with the boy. There had been little serious fighting between the two armies in the month after Achilles’ death—only small sorties—and this angered the newly arrived, glory-seeking child. I thought it good for him to learn patience. He had other ideas.
One day, my chariot driver came to me reporting that the son of Achilles had taken one of our war prisoners against the ruling of Agamemnon.
“Why didn’t you stop him?” I asked. “Why didn’t any of the other men?”
He shrugged, coloring, and I didn’t berate him. There is something daemon-touched in that boy, and unless ordered to, few men desire to tangle with him.
“Where did he take the prisoner?”
“He dragged him to the eastern forest.”
There was, of course, no forest left—outside of the small remaining groves of fig and olive trees—in the lands surrounding the city since we had ravaged the hard woods for our weapons, tools, ships, and fires over the years. Still, a long thicket of trees said to be sacred to Apollo stood by the Scamander, and that was where I headed after grabbing my sword.
Finding him was easy. All I needed to do was follow the screams.
He’d tied the naked young Trojan prisoner, standing spread-eagled, ropes on wrists and ankles, between two trees. The man—boy, really—was covered in blood from deep gashes all over his naked body.
“What are you doing?” I thundered. “Agamemnon did not give you leave to torture this prisoner!”
The son of Achilles turned to me. He was still such a youth—fifteen, maybe? He was big for his age and looked to grow even bigger than his father, judging by the size of his feet and lankiness of his bones. Despite myself, I swallowed the irritating awareness that within one summer this dead-eyed boy likely will be a head taller than me.
“I am not torturing him. I am practicing,” he called disdainfully as I jogged up to him.
His victim had lost awareness, his head lolling, and I wondered for a moment if he was dead. But no, his chest continued to move, albeit shallowly.
Something about the little shit’s attitude made me grip my sword hard. But I would not show it.
“If you must practice,” I drawled after unclenching my teeth, “there are plenty of experienced fighters who will spar with you.”
“I don’t want to spar,” he spit. “I want to learn to cleave a limb with one stroke. Like my father.”
That’s when I saw the gleaming white of the poor Trojan’s shoulder joint. An exposed kneecap. A bludgeoned hip. I pushed the boy away, hard.
“Then apprentice with a butcher,” I growled. “And leave this man in peace. There is no honor in attacking an unarmed man.”
But Neoptolemus rippled with menace at my laying of hands on him. Hatred lit a fire in his eyes. I didn’t care. With one quick stroke, I slit the agonized prisoner’s throat in a move of mercy.
Achilles’ son roared as if I’d stolen his favorite toy. I could feel Neoptolemus’ rage burn hotter than his father’s, like a predator’s panting breath before it leaps. But I ignored him, cutting through the man’s ropes so that he fell like a child’s puppet, crumpled to the ground.
“Now,” I said in a quiet, casual voice, as if we were talking about the weather or the season of the year. “You will tend to this man’s body and give him the rights due a warrior.”
“And if I don’t?”
Gods, how I wanted to wipe that sullen smirk off that smooth-cheeked face!
“I will punish you for disobeying a king’s command.” I put a hand up as he puffed up to argue. “You may be big, but I am stronger, and I will not hesitate to take you over my knee. Just try me.”
“You cannot! I am the leader of the Myrmidons!”
Who already detest you. “I am your senior, nonetheless. None will fault me for laying a hand on you, I promise you that.”
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He must have seen something in my eyes, for he took a step back, bottom jaw jutting out like a pouting child.
Reluctantly, he did as he was told, but I prayed never to have another conversation with that young serpent bearing his father’s face. At his age, he should have been running races with his mates, learning to hunt game, play-training with wooden swords, rowing a small boat—anything but practicing cleaving limbs from a living prisoner.
Suppressing a shiver as I lay prostrate before Athena outside her very temple, I think again, for all our sakes, I must find a way to end this war.
When the altar fire diminishes and no one comes to stoke it, I know that my poppy-dosed wine has finally taken effect. While waiting, I’ve mentally measured the size of my prize in its curved niche. It’s surprisingly small. From here, it looks like it might be the length of my thigh. It bears the same coldly beautiful and impassive face of the goddess of wisdom on the larger statue, but I could swear, when the light flickers, there is a twinkle in her gray-painted eyes.
Still, it is strange to see Athena’s shields in the colors and design of the Hittites, her cloak painted in stars instead of the broad brush of deep red—a reminder that I am in enemy territory.
I try to keep my rustling to a minimum as I get up. If any of the others wake, I’ll just say I’m going to relieve myself. But they don’t. No one even twitches.
The stillness makes me think Athena is helping me. It must be that she, too, wants this tiresome war finished and forgives me trespassing in her sacred house. Or so I tell myself, for surely the goddess would expose me if she were unhappy with my plan.
Soundlessly, I weave past the sleeping priest and priestess inside the small dwelling that also serves as the storeroom for the trinkets, statues, and charms they sell. I release a breath once I’ve made it to their inner courtyard.