by David
One calm day Oniacus had offered to teach her to row, and she had grasped the great oar and learned to pull with the motion of the sea. But within a short time her palms were covered with bleeding blisters, and Helikaon had told her angrily to stop.
Helikaon! She did not turn around, for she knew he would be standing at the stern of the ship, one arm on the great steering oar, watching her. Closing her eyes, she could recall every detail of his face, the fine dark hairs of his eyebrows, the exact set of the corners of his mouth, the shape of his ears. In her mind’s eye she could see his bronzed arm with its soft sun-bleached hairs draped across the steering oar, as she had seen it a hundred times. She knew every scar on his body by touch and taste. He was wearing a long winter robe of blue wool, the same color as his eyes when he was angry, and his feet were in old sandals stained by salt and time.
They had tried to follow the counsel of Odysseus at first and stay away from each other, not touching, not brushing past each other on the narrow aisle of the ship, barely speaking unless there were crewmen present. Their determination had lasted until they had reached the Seven Hills.
Andromache had been astonished by the small thriving city built by Helikaon and Odysseus so far from their homes. The stockaded fort was on a hill overlooking the great river Thybris, and a busy community had developed around it, flourishing in the soft, verdant land so different from Ithaka and Dardanos. The people had started building a stone wall around the fort, for they had to fend off attacks from local tribes that resented the presence of foreigners from far across the seas. But the king of one of the tribes, Latinus, had welcomed them and joined his forces to theirs, and the community of the Seven Hills grew. They had purchased tin from pale-skinned traders traveling from far to the north in the Land of Mists, and Helikaon had been able to fill the Xanthos’ cargo hold with the precious metal.
One night a feast was held in honor of one of the country’s tribal gods, and the crewmen of the Xanthos joined in with relish. In the firelight Andromache, a little drunk, caught Helikaon’s eye and smiled. No further message was needed. Unseen, they crept away and found a soft mossy hollow far from the revels, where they made love for most of the night, first with frantic animal passion and then, later, gently and tenderly until the first glimmer of dawn. Little was said; they had no need of words.
Back on board the ship, returning to Troy with all haste, the lovers had stayed away from each other again. Helikaon had steered the Xanthos up the coast of Mykene, which was deserted of ships, then crossed the Great Green high to the north. They had spent the last night before their return to Troy in a deep cove on the isle of Samothraki. Andromache had remained on board the ship in her small tent pitched on the foredeck, and Helikaon had come to her in the darkness.
The night was pitch black, but she heard the small soft sound of the tent flaps being parted, smelled the musky smell of him as he lay down beside her. He said nothing but pulled down the sheepskin covering her body and kissed her shoulder. She turned to him. He kissed her mouth deeply, and the swell of suppressed longing in her rose so sharply that it was painful. She moaned. He put his hand over her mouth. “No sounds,” he whispered in her ear. She nodded her head, then gently bit the palm of his hand, tasting salt. He smiled against her cheek. He slid under the warm sheepskin and moved on top of her, his body cool against her fiery loins. Her legs rose up to meet him, and he entered her, warm and wet in the animal-smelling darkness.
He paused for a few unbearable heartbeats, then moved against her slowly. Too slowly. She squirmed under him, seeking a quick release from the painful longing of her body. He stopped until she lay still, then moved again, teasing her. When she finally climaxed, the need to cry out became almost unstoppable, and he put his hand over her mouth again, then kissed her hard. He lay still for mere moments, then started again.
At last, drained and exhausted, he rolled away from her, and they pushed off the damp animal skin and let the sweat dry on their bodies.
She whispered in his ear, “Tomorrow we will be back in Troy.”
“Not now, my love,” he murmured. “We will have plenty of time to talk about it tomorrow.” They spoke no more that night.
Now, standing on the foredeck of the ship, Andromache closed her eyes again and let her body move dreamily with the rhythms of the waves, remembering that wondrous night and its own rhythms.
When she opened her eyes, she could see a dark speck on the blue sea to her left.
“Ship to port!” she cried, pointing, and within heartbeats she felt the great ship move beneath her toward the new threat. She narrowed her eyes. She could see it was a galley under sail, no mere fishing boat, but could not make out its markings.
“It’s Dardanian, lord!” shouted Praxos, new to the crew the previous autumn and with the sharp eyes of the young. “I can see the black horse!”
There was a lusty cheer from the oarsmen, most of whom were Dardanians and were looking forward to returning to their families. As Andromache watched, the other ship’s sail was furled and her rowers took up the beat. The two ships glided toward each other. As they met, rowers on the approaching sides shipped their oars, and ropes were thrown across, lashing the ships together.
Andromache made her way along the aisle of the Xanthos to the stern. Helikaon glanced at her, his face expressionless. “It is the Boreas,” he said.
They waited in silence as the Dardanian ship’s young fair-haired captain shinnied up a rope, climbed to the deck, and fell to his knees before Helikaon. “Golden One, thank the mercy of Poseidon we met you,” he said breathlessly. “We were expecting the Xanthos to sail up the coast, and most of our ships are off Lesbos, waiting for you.”
“Calm down, Asios. Why was the Boreas waiting?”
“Troy is under siege, lord,” the young man told him, “and the Mykene fleet of Menados holds the entrance to the Hellespont. Agamemnon is camped in the Bay of Herakles with a thousand ships. We hoped to warn you before you sailed unknowing into them.”
Andromache closed her eyes. She had left Astyanax thinking he was safe in Troy. The familiar demon of guilt clawed at her. She had left her son to be with her lover. Who did she think of more often on her journey, her only son or Helikaon?
Helikaon was asking, “What of Dardanos?”
“The Mykene have ignored the fortress. Our people are safe for a while. Agamemnon has pulled his troops away from Thebe as well, lady.” He glanced at Andromache and flushed. “He has thrown all his forces and those of the western kings into an attack on the Golden City.”
“And Hektor?” Andromache asked.
“Hektor leads the Trojan defense, but they are outnumbered, and the last we heard they had been pushed back to the lower town. King’s Joy is taken, and the plain of the Scamander.” He hesitated. “Prince Paris and his wife are dead. And Prince Antiphones.”
Andromache, stunned by the news, saw the color drain from Helikaon’s face. “All dead?” he said, his deep voice grave.
“There has been great slaughter on both sides, lord. The funeral pyres burn night and day. If the Xanthos had arrived after dark, you would have seen their light from far across the Great Green.”
“The city is surrounded?”
“No, lord. All their efforts are on the south of the city, at the fortification ditch. People can still flee through the Scaean Gate or the Dardanian Gate. Everyone is leaving,” he said. “But that was six days ago. The situation changes daily. The Boreas has had no word since then.”
Oniacus stepped forward. “Agamemnon has left his ships vulnerable at the Bay of Herakles, Golden One,” he said. “Our fire hurlers can destroy his ships in one night, as we did at Imbros.”
Helikaon frowned. “Perhaps later. But at the moment, sadly, I do not have that choice. The city is awaiting our cargo of tin, is it not, Asios?”
The young man nodded. “The city’s forges are dark,” he said. “Troy desperately needs weapons and armor.”
Suddenly he glanced toward th
e coast, startled, and they all turned. In the distance at the tip of Trojan lands, the Cape of Tides, a light had appeared. It was a beacon, blazing brightly.
Helikaon gazed at it and frowned. “A beacon, but telling what to whom? Asios, is the Cape of Tides in Trojan or Mykene hands?”
“I know not, lord. Trojan when I last heard.” He shrugged.
“It tells us nothing, then,” Helikaon said briskly, his decision made. “Oniacus, we will sail on to the Hellespont and the Bay of Troy, then make our way up the Simoeis. We will berth there and, if Athene favors us, smuggle our tin into the city from the north.”
“But Menados’ fleet holds the Hellespont,” the young captain repeated. “Even the Xanthos cannot defeat his fifty ships!”
“But,” Helikaon said thoughtfully, “maybe together the Xanthos and the Boreas can.”
The Mykene admiral Menados looked up from the high deck of his patrol ship and saw a beacon blazing on the topmost cliff of the Cape of Tides.
“What does it mean, Admiral?” asked his aide, his sister’s son, a bright enough boy but with no initiative.
“I do not know,” the admiral told him. “The Trojans are signaling someone, but we cannot tell who or what the signal means. Much good may it do them,” he grunted. “They are all dead men, anyway.”
Like his crews, Menados was bored and frustrated after long days of sailing the Hellespont. Of his fleet of fifty-seven, he had ordered thirty ships to patrol the length of the Trojan coast from the tip of the Thrakian shore to the Bay of Herakles. Seven ships, including this own, the new bireme Alektruon, held station against the current in the Hellespont. The remaining twenty ships were beached on the coast of Thraki, their men relieved to sleep and eat. The ships’ duties were rotated regularly, but it was no work for fighting men, he thought, traveling back and forth, first under oars and then under sail, over and over again, wearing out the oarsmen and blunting the skills of their captains. Menados privately thought the duty was Agamemnon’s punishment of him for the mercy Helikaon had shown him at Dardanos.
Word of the blockade had traveled swiftly through the lands bordering the Hellespont, and no ship so far had tried to break it and sail out of the straits. They had sunk one Dardanian ship trying to break in under cover of darkness, and two Hittite merchants had tried to run the blockade and get home, angry at Agamemnon’s high-handed action in closing the straits to the ships of all lands.
As the doomed Hittite seamen had struggled in the cold, treacherous waters, Menados had been asked if the Mykene ships should pick them up. Let them die, had been his order. Personally, it would have been his choice to rescue them; he had respect for seamen of all lands, and it would have been easy enough to drop them on the Thrakian coast to make their way home on foot. But word could not get back to the Hittite emperor that his ships were being sunk by the Mykene. The few strong swimmers who seemed likely to make it to the shore were stalked by the ships, then picked off by archers when they failed to drown.
“Ship to the north!”
The admiral turned and shaded his eyes. Members of the Alektruon’s crew jumped up to look, eager for action. The distant ship was under sail, speeding toward them, pushed by the stiff northerly. Menados could not see its markings in the failing light but hoped it was Dardanian or Trojan.
Most of the Trojan fleet was bottled up in the Bay of Troy. It could not get out, but equally, the Mykene fleet could not get in. Priam never had acquired the strength of shipping justified by such a great city, relying instead on the huge Dardanian fleet built up by his kinsmen Anchises and Helikaon for his trading and defense. There were a mere eighteen Trojan ships trapped in the bay, but many were said to be equipped with fire hurlers, which balanced Menados’ numerical advantage. It was a stalemate.
With more ships at his disposal, Menados knew he could take the bay easily. But Agamemnon needed every available foot soldier to capture the city, for they were dying in the thousands.
Menados sighed. The crewmen confined to his ships should be content to stay aboard. Daily they saw in the sky above Troy the evidence of the funeral pyres, pillars of smoke by day and a fiery glow by night.
“It’s a Dardanian ship, lord!” his aide cried. “Your orders?”
Now Menados could see for himself the black horse sail. Not the Xanthos, though, he thought. Too small. A pity.
“Five ships,” he ordered. “Board her. They may have useful information for Agamemnon. The other ships close on her but stand off. There might be fire hurlers.”
His orders were given by the display of brightly colored banners fashioned from linen, a system Menados had invented for conveying information at sea. Five ships, four Mykene and one Athenian, set off toward the oncoming vessel, intending to slow her by destroying her sail, then ram and board her. The other Mykene ships all turned to the north, too. The Dardanian ship came on, not changing her course, apparently determined to break through the vessels approaching her.
As they closed, flaming arrows shot from the Athenian ship, targeted on the black horse. Two fell in the sea, but five hit their mark, and the sail began to burn. As it disintegrated in flame, the ship lost its way, but it still came on. Flaming debris fell to the deck, there was a mighty whoosh, and instantly the whole ship was alight.
At the last moment Menados saw three figures hurl themselves from the deck of the ship into the water.
“Fire ship!” he shouted. “Come about! Keep clear!”
But the blazing ship came on, and the Athenian ship could not get clear in time. The fire ship rammed into her hull as she was still turning and slid along the wooden planking. The force of the collision caused the Dardanian ship’s mast to collapse, and it fell flaming onto the deck of the Athenian ship. Pieces of burning sail hurled by the high wind struck the sail of one of the Mykene ships, and it, too, started to blaze.
“Fools!” Menados shouted, watching two of his ships blazing, the crews throwing themselves into the water. The other ships were moving clear.
And fools aboard the fire ship, he thought. Why sacrifice a ship in such a way?
He spun around. Behind them, powering at full speed through the gathering darkness, he could see the Xanthos making its way through the gap between the Mykene ships and the Cape of Tides. It was a rough and windy night, and the bireme’s rowers were hard-pressed by the wind from the north and the strong current at the cape.
“The Xanthos!” Menados shouted. “Come about, you idiots! Quickly!”
His steersman leaned on the steering oar with all his strength, and Menados added his own weight. But by the time they turned the ship to chase the great vessel, it was fully dark, and the Xanthos sped away from the light of the three blazing ships and disappeared into the darkness of the Hellespont.
The Xanthos moved ahead slowly through the night, making her way east along the Simoeis. The sky was clear and starlit overhead, but a light mist lay over the river. The only sounds were the soft plashing of oars and the harsh braying of donkeys in the distance. It was so quiet that Andromache could hear scuffling noises in the reeds as small creatures fled the passing of the great ship.
The Xanthos had entered the straits at a dangerous speed in the darkness, overloaded as she was with the crew of the Boreas. Only a seaman as experienced as Helikaon would have risked it, for he knew the strong currents and perilous rocks of the Cape of Tides better than any man. But once within the Bay of Troy, the rowers had slowed. Then more vessels had loomed around them in the dark: the Trojan ships trapped in the bay. Andromache would have expected cheering as the Golden Ship glided past, but there was an eerie silence as sailors lined the decks to watch the Xanthos as it headed through the bay toward Troy’s northern river.
“Why so quiet?” she asked Oniacus, who was standing on the foredeck with a sounding pole, peering into the mist ahead. “We are still far from Troy and the enemy camps.”
Keeping his gaze fixed on the river, the sailor replied, “At night sound travels over very great distance
s. We cannot be too careful.”
“They all look so grim,” she said.
He nodded. “Aye. It seems much has changed here since we left.”
The Simoeis was shallow and marshy even in the spring, and Helikaon steered the Xanthos in the center of the river. Andromache could see little in the misty night, and time crawled by slowly. Finally she felt the ship slow to a complete stop. The silence around them was heavy and oppressive.
“This is about as far as we can go,” Oniacus said quietly. “We will moor here and unload the tin. We can only hope our enemies are not expecting us.”
Andromache felt a shiver of fear run through her. Trapped in this shallow, narrow river, the Xanthos would be vulnerable if the forces of the Mykene found her. Had the admiral Menados been able to send word to Agamemnon of the ship’s arrival? Had he had the time?
The rowers shipped their oars, and the sluggish pull of the river floated the vessel gently into the side. Andromache strained her eyes to see into the mist on the riverbank.
Suddenly a torch flared. A voice called softly, “Ho, Xanthos!” A dark figure, hooded and cloaked, appeared out of the gloom. In the light of a single torch he looked massive.
Helikaon left the steering oar and strode down the aisle to the center deck. With a long dagger in one hand he vaulted over the side of the ship and landed lightly on the soft ground beneath.
Andromache heard a familiar voice say, “There is no need for daggers between us, Golden One.” Then Hektor pushed his hood back, stepped forward, and threw his arms around Helikaon in a bear hug.
She heard him ask, “Is Andromache safe?” and she stepped to the side of the ship where she could be seen. Hektor looked up, and in the torchlight she could see that his face was tired and strained. But he smiled when he saw her.