“In the temple. That’s where those soldiers was, near as I could tell from what they were saying. Today as they went on about it, they were still grumbling about how they’d been told by their betters not to take the gods’ statues or such like so as they wouldn’t have the gods angry with them. Lord Achilles’ orders, they said, and no one dares go against him. There was lots of things they could steal anyways, so they were busy at it and killing all the priests as the poor souls tried to protect their temple. I’m sorry to remind you of the priests dying. You went there often and must have knowed them. Strange to say, though, it weren’t a priest that scared those big louts. It were a priestess. A priestess they come across in a little room with a silver goddess wearing a golden necklace.”
“Kamrusepa.” Briseis said, with a sinking heart.
“That’s what I were thinking,” said Eurome. “That necklace were too much for them. They’d been told not to touch any such like things, as I said, but it were too much. All that gold finery and them just rough men, not lords or anything. They’d never have a chance for such a treasure any other way and no one else around to see them at it—or so they thought. One man reached out for it, egged on, I can imagine, by the others. Then, like the angry goddess herself, a priestess rose from behind the altar—I’m guessing she were hiding there from the scoundrels like I would ha’—she rose up, as I say, and scared the daylight out of that man, what with raising her arms in the air like she were calling down all the gods on the man’s head. I can see it myself, and that man were afeared right out of his wits.”
Briseis felt a shiver run down her back. “Zitha!”
Eurome nodded. “Who else could it be? And you’ll see from the rest that’s who it were sure enough. Even with her rising up like that, the man still snatched the necklace, so the priestess screamed curses at him about wolves ripping out his insides since he’d ripped away the goddess’s necklace. The man dropped it and ran. Can’t you see it happening? Afeared out of his wits, I tell you. Zitha turned out to be a wild one after all, didn’t she? I knowed she caused you a lot of trouble with that henbane and the queen before you made up as friends. She done too much this time, I’m sorry to say. Those men killed her to put a stop to that cursing.”
“She was a brave woman,” said Briseis. “She would have chosen to die at the feet of her goddess, I think.”
Eurome patted her hand. “There’s another bit that’s downright satisfying, if I say so. Zitha might ha’ gotten back a mite from them louts. The man who grabbed the necklace, well, he up and died sudden-like here in the camp. That’s why them soldiers was talking about it. Everyone’s saying how it were the curse that killed that man, the wolf curse, they call it. You told me there weren’t no such curse, but it were satisfying to me to think it might ha’ been Zitha’s doing. A bit of revenge, I’m saying, whether it were or no.”
“Perhaps she did,” said Briseis. “I like that idea, too.” She put her arm around Eurome. A healing goddess could kill with illness even if there wasn’t a curse. Zitha had been brave to defend her goddess and to think of the wolf curse when she’d been beaten for it before. Her heroism was no less than that shown by her brothers as Lyrnessos fell.
Early one morning as Briseis brought the last of the day’s water, she noticed Achilles talking with another warrior—a king, she judged, by the way he carried himself and the richness of the warm cloak he wore against the autumn chill. The man’s head came only midway up Achilles’ chest and he was somewhat bandy-legged, but he still exuded a smooth confidence that marked him as important.
Achilles looked at him as though the man gave off a noxious odor.
Why was that? Curious, Briseis lugged her pitcher of water over toward the large storage amphora that sat next to Achilles’ porch. She had already almost filled it with water, but there was room for one more pitcher-full. From there she’d be able to overhear them. She set down the pitcher to warm her hands against her body under the length of rough wool she’d made into a cloak.
“Agamemnon would be in your debt,” said the warrior. “He isn’t asking for this without dire need. Food supplies are low again.”
“You can tell the greedy swine,” said Achilles, “to sell off some of his piles of treasure to buy food for his army. I will not go on another raid for him, Odysseus. You know that already. In my debt? The only debts Agamemnon recognizes are those he holds against others.”
Briseis looked with greater interest. So this was Odysseus, the Greek with the silvery tongue—a different voice for each listener. That was the phrase Asdu had repeated—she’d overheard it from Achilles and shared it with the women when they were seated around the fire after dinner. The captives liked filling out the picture of the different Greek kings they’d first started back at home. In Lyrnessos they’d heard of Odysseus because he seemed the only Greek interested in negotiating a way out of the war. For that, her father had admired Odysseus, although he’d never met the man. Achilles didn’t seem to share her father’s approval of this king.
“The men need this, Achilles,” Odysseus said. “How can they fight without meat in their bellies?”
Achilles snorted a bitter laugh. “How many times have you heard those words from my mouth, Odysseus? Did you think I would forget that they are mine? Your silver tongue is slipping. I can’t be persuaded with such transparent tricks. True enough words, but tell the greedy sow to fill his men’s bellies out of his own stores. Otherwise he may find himself buried underneath his stockpiles when they tumble down upon him.”
Achilles made a dismissive gesture. Odysseus bowed respectfully, although Briseis thought he must be burning from the insult.
“I will relay to Agamemnon your eagerness to remain in the battles here, Achilles.” Then Odysseus walked calmly away. The man had remarkable control. Briseis wanted to laugh at the way he’d turned that last parting into something positive. She wished she could hold her tongue so commendably.
Achilles took all the steps of his porch in one of his extraordinary strides so that he landed quite close to her. She realized he’d known she was listening in.
He smiled at her. “Never believe anything that man says without looking very carefully at who is to gain.”
She nodded, somewhat startled by this odd confidence. “I will remember that, Lord Achilles.”
They had talked together a few times since she’d thanked him for the tapestry, but only briefly. He usually greeted her with the solemnity appropriate to a court ceremony, but their conversations felt awkward and ended quickly. This peculiar meeting seemed even more strained than their previous ones. She pulled her cloak more tightly around her.
He never asked her to serve meals with the other young women. It relieved her not to have to be near him. The liquid movements of his limbs and his vigor stirred a response in her whether she wanted it to or not. She recognized his kindnesses and how well he understood her nature, but she could not forget her brother’s bloody death. Achilles’ presence threatened to tear her in two.
Achilles tipped his head sideways and he seemed to study her. She lowered her head.
“The war creates a great need for healers,” he said.
She looked up. This topic interested her. Maybe he would ask her to help, although she’d never been taught how to treat a wound. She wouldn’t be much use. She fought back the lump in her throat when she remembered wanting Iatros to show her. Without her dear brother, she couldn’t imagine learning these skills.
She had seen the injured brought back and tended to by the healers in the camp, not only Achilles and Patroklos, but also two others, Machaon and Podaleirios, who were said to be the sons of a healing god named Asclepios. These divinely instructed men wouldn’t value her skills.
“You are a healer from a family of healers,” said Achilles. “Your mother before you and your brother, Iatros. I remember your matching satchels. I wonder—”
She balled her hands into fists. Hearing Iatros’s name from his lips felt like a des
ecration. “Don’t speak of him.”
She couldn’t betray Iatros, couldn’t talk to this man about her brother. Bands tightened at her temples as her fury grew and threatened to boil over.
Achilles’ face flushed and his hands also turned into fists. His eyes burned into hers, disorienting her. Crashing waves reverberated inside her. He turned away abruptly and left. She swayed on her feet and grabbed the porch upright to steady herself.
Her anger at the too-familiar pain of her brother’s death had flared quickly. She regretted her curtness, but she knew where it came from. She’d even mistreated Eurome when her nursemaid had gone on about Iatros. It was too painful to talk about her brother, and with Achilles, of all people, unbearable. She understood her response and yet this surge of emotion also felt foreign. She shook her head in confusion.
He disappeared into his shelter. She’d never know what he meant to say. She had embarrassed him, and besides, she had to admit he always showed respect for her grief. He wouldn’t intrude if he thought he’d caused her distress.
After a day that had gone badly for the Greeks—they’d suffered great losses, especially among the rank and file, something about a retreat that had gone wrong—the men returned to camp in a vicious mood. Nothing the women could do was right. The same bread they baked each evening was now too burnt or underdone. They were told their ugly faces were an offense, although usually the men bantered with them in a bawdy way, respectful of their commander’s property but willing to enjoy a little harmless flirting with some pretty captives when he wasn’t around. They’d been beaten and they were looking for someone to take it out on. A camp full of men who behaved like Mynes, thought Briseis.
She finished her tasks with relief. Most of the women retreated to their dark hut, but the sun’s last light still glowed dimly on the horizon and Briseis wanted fresh air despite the chilliness that crept in as soon as the sun went down. She took advantage of the freedom she had won with that Greek’s sword. She walked down to the shore of the bay where the breezes might bring her a breath of less fetid-smelling air.
She stretched her tired back and shook out her legs, stiff from crouching by the cook fire, then walked along the edge of the water in quick strides, enjoying her solitude. After a time, to her annoyance, she saw another person ahead of her, someone who frequently came to the sea, although whether for the breezes or because he was born of a sea goddess, she didn’t know. She wished he hadn’t chosen this evening. Quickly she slipped behind a ship hull until he had outpaced her far enough not to notice if she also took a walk.
She had come almost to the midpoint of the shoreline the camp occupied when she heard a loud exclamation. “Let go of me!” That was Maira’s voice. Scuffling, blows. Briseis ran in the direction of the sounds. Dimly she saw two figures struggling. A man dragged Maira toward the open doorway of a hut.
“Leave me alone or I’ll tell Agamemnon.”
“I saved the winesack’s life today, though you won’t hear him tell the tale.”
The man yanked Maira through the doorway. “He can share his women with one of his henchman today whether he wants to or not. I dare you to tell him.”
Briseis ran. As she got to the doorway, the soldier flung Maira to the ground, his back to Briseis. Maira kicked out at him, but before she could scramble up, he kicked her in the belly, making her gasp for air, then dropped down and clamped both her hands against the ground over her head with one of his. Seeing Maira pinned like that, stretched out and exposed, enraged Briseis. He was ripping at Maira’s clothes and yanking his own out of the way with his free hand. Maira screamed and he slapped her face and jammed his knee into her middle. Here was Mynes all over again. Briseis needed something to stop the soldier. A dribble of blood ran from Maira’s nose and her struggling stopped.
Briseis scanned the meager fire in the middle of the hut and the cooking implements scattered around it. He was a soldier. There must be a weapon. Somewhere.
“That’s more like it, bitch. Quiet now, like a good girl. I like a regular hole to plug and you’re it.” Maira tried to kick him, but she couldn’t get free and he hit her again with even more force.
He leaned in over her face. “You tell Agamemnon and he’ll have you killed. He won’t share, but he won’t take it out on a man who keeps the swords from his belly on the battlefield. I plan to cram you full every night.”
Briseis leaned down toward the fire. Not again. Not to anyone she cared about. Her fingers grasped a filthy butchering knife partially buried in the ash.
He’d bared most of Maira’s body and was intent on spreading her legs with his knees while keeping her hands pinned.
Briseis lifted the knife. She aimed for the soft area below the ribs and drove it in with her whole weight and fury.
The man bellowed like an ox. Briseis yanked out the knife, shoving him over on his back with her foot, off Maira. She silenced him with the knife in the hollow of his throat. Blood went everywhere and the man lay dead. She shivered, but at the same time burning heat lifted her.
Maira scrambled away from her. Briseis had to explain, to make that shocked look soften. “Mynes used to laugh, ‘I’m going to plow you every night.’ When Mynes was forced to stay behind, when he was so angry at me and everyone for losing out on the chance to kill some Greeks, he took all his rage out on me. I wasn’t going to let this filth do that to you. He’s probably the same monster who threw babies against the wall when they destroyed Lyrnessos. I saw that. Now maybe I won’t keep seeing it in my nightmares every night.”
Movement in the doorway made her turn with a start. Achilles stood there. Maira gasped. Briseis helped her up. Maira pulled her torn clothes around her body, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.
Achilles glanced at the dead man, at Maira, at the blood splattered on Briseis. He nodded as if they’d explained what had happened.
“I’ll drag this corpse to where the rest of the day’s dead are still piled, waiting for burial. Only the princely dead received honors today. One more will never be noticed, and this offal less than most.”
He looked at Maira. “Hide what happened here, for her sake—” he indicated Briseis, “—and for yours. Go now.”
Maira nodded. She looked at Briseis and started to reach for her, but her tunic slipped and she clutched it again. She bowed her head to Briseis and slipped out of the hut.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Strong Love
Achilles turned to Briseis. “Wait for me here while I—” He indicated the body. “You must not be seen like that.” She looked down at her blood-drenched clothes, nodded and dropped the knife. Achilles hoisted the body and left.
She shook uncontrollably, but she didn’t regret killing the man. She didn’t feel repulsed by what she’d done, but exhilarated. She’d never liked attending while the priests sacrificed the sheep and cattle, hating the blood flooding into the sacred bowls, but this drenching made her feel strong. This must be how warriors felt in battle.
She held up her blood-soaked hands. They looked like Achilles’ hands covered in her brother’s blood. A dam gave way inside her and a flood washed away the aversion to Achilles that had held her tighter each time she remembered her brother’s death. Iatros’s loss did not grow less painful, but she couldn’t condemn Achilles any longer for having the same inner urge, as a warrior, that she had discovered in herself. She’d attacked twice—no aberration born only of a single moment, but a part of her true self. This time she’d killed a man. With relief, she no longer felt torn in two when she considered Achilles’ nature. She understood it. She knelt and washed her hands with a pitcher of water.
Achilles returned to the hut. He watched her and she looked him in the eye. A fire kindled within his sea-green gaze. “You really are a warrior. A fierce one.” He looked around the hut. “Did you know that woman?”
She nodded and stood up. She wondered how to describe who Maira was to her—long ago she had ceased to be a servant. Circumstances and underst
anding had created a bond as close as the one she had shared with Iatros. “She is like a sister to me.”
“Then you had no choice.”
The final knot let go inside her. He understood.
He stepped closer to her, moving around the fire pit in the center of the hut. “When I am on the battlefield, it’s the same. Every man around me is my brother.” He put his hands on her shoulders. He hadn’t touched her since he took her hand at the assembly. Awareness of each of his fingers and the powerful palms pressed into her, rippling through her. “Can you forgive me?”
She knew what he meant. He’d had no more choice when he’d killed her brother than she had when she lifted the sword, when she plunged the knife. And she understood rash acts.
He didn’t wait for her to answer. He leaned down and pressed his lips onto hers. His hands slid from her shoulders to her lower back, pulling her against his body, melding them together. For a moment she remembered the blood, and then it didn’t matter.
His hands sent hot waves through her. She needed his skin against hers and pulled at his clothes. He smiled at her eagerness and lifted his sword belt and tunic over his head, and she untied his underclothes, letting them drop to the ground. She shivered at his beauty and ran her lips down his chest, softly undulating over the muscles and contours.
“Off with yours, please,” he said.
She smiled up at him and undid her belt, tossed off her dreadful clothes.
He embraced her so powerfully that she was lifted off the ground and wrapped her legs around him. Her arms braced against his shoulders as he slid inside of her, moving her body in a rhythm that submerged them both in an oblivion of heat.
When he released her gently to the ground, she began to tremble again. Achilles wrapped his cloak tightly around her.
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