by John Shirley
The truce was thus broken, and terrible battle ensued.
Bronze spear-points thrust through shields and corselets, into chests and bellies and bowels. Arrows sang from bowstrings. Great sword-blades slashed, splitting torsos open, hewing arms at the shoulder. Flung stones cracked apart skulls and smashed hip-bones in their cup-sockets. Guts spilled, ichor spattered and blood spouted in the air.
The dark mists descended over many warriors’ eyes. Their armor clattered around them as they fell. Foes sprang swift upon them to strip their corpses. Some men flung themselves down in surrender, begging to be made captive and held for rich ransom; sometimes these pleas were granted, and other times they were met with a killing blow.
The men greatest at warcraft made themselves well-known that day. Hector of the shining helm, mighty Ajax, strongest of the Greeks, godlike Sarpedon, brilliant Aeneas, as deadly as if accompanied by Hastur himself, and Diomedes, inspired by grey-eyed Athena.
Bodies piled and sprawled face-down in the dust, the sons of Ithilium and the Achaeans alike. The tides turned this way and that as gods bickered and men fought for their lives.
Through it all, in his torment of wroth, Achilles would not relent. He kept his men by the ships, their spears un-bloodied, their horses idle. When Agamemnon, humbled and regretting the madness of his pride, offered such a generous wealth of presents that no man could think of its equal, Achilles still spurned the gifts with harsh words.
Sooner, he said, would he gather his ships and set homeward sail, and would urge the rest of the Greeks to do the same rather than have them follow Agamemnon, who would lead them only to further disaster. He even refused to take back Briseis, feeling the insult he’d suffered was not yet appeased.
At that, spite bristled in Briseis, and she determined to find yet another way to bring sorrows upon Achilles.
One night as the watch-fires burned around the camp and atop the high walls of Troy, she sent for Patroclus, his longtime most intimate of companions. This, she did under the guise of settling their differences, for their shared love of Peleus’ son.
“Let us no more be at odds,” she told him, fixing him with the gaze of her wide, round eyes. She held out her hands to him. “Let us be friends, and I will give you good counsel.”
Patroclus submitted to having his hands clasped in hers, and as the salt-nectar from her pale, tender palms permeated his skin to suffuse him, he listened.
She suggested that he don the armor and take up the shield of Achilles, going forth in his stead. This would, she said, give great heart to the Achaeans, who would fight with renewed vigor. It would lessen the ignominy of Achilles’ sulking. It would bring the Myrmidons, and Patroclus himself, much glory.
And Patroclus, swayed by her words, and Dagon’s influence behind them, agreed.
2
The Princess
She had gone in great speed to the great bastion of Ithilium upon hearing that the battle was so fiercely joined. A nurse went with her, attending to the baby, their child, Hector’s son, Astyanax, their young shining treasure and future lord of the city.
Oh, her poor little one, her poor dearest boy, and what would become of him if the city should fall? If he be left an orphan, and she, Andromache, a widow? No mercy would there be for the wife and child of Hector, who brought such slaughter to the enemy.
Yet, no mercy for herself did Andromache crave. She had no desire to live without her beloved husband. It was for Astyanax her heart tore at itself with terror’s anxious teeth.
Hector found her there at a lull in the battle. She ran to meet him, uttering a glad cry that turned into tears as he held her. He had come, he told her, to urge his mother and sisters, and the noble ladies of Troy, to heed a message of the augurs delivered to him. They must go to the temples sacred to Yhagni, and Yidhra, and make sacrifice so that those fearful elder-goddesses might protect from the Greeks the Trojan wives and innocent children.
That done, he had sought out Andromache at their own house, then asked of the servants where she had gone; he wished to visit her before he must return to the field where men win glory.
“For I do not know,” he said, “if ever again I shall come back this way.”
She beseeched him to stay there safe upon the ramparts. “They will kill you,” wept Andromache. “Your own strength and courage will be your death. And oh, my dear husband, have I not already lost my own father and seven brothers to the spear of Achilles? Must I lose you, as well?”
But, of course, Hector’s valiant spirit would not let him shrink from the fighting; he could not be a coward, shamed in the many eyes of Ithilium. He embraced little Astyanax, then placed the child in Andromache’s arms and enfolded the both of them in his. They stood there as the wind blew skyward in spirals the sacrificial smoke from the temples.
Then Andromache asked of him a different boon. “If you will not stay, and I know already you would not have me take up the war-weapons like some Amazon instead of the good loom and distaff, at least open to me Yog-Sothoth’s way. Do not leave me waiting for word of your fate. Let me, in this manner, go with you, so that we are not parted.”
Hector nodded his assent. He drew off his helm of glinting bronze to be set aside. His brow opened outward in a fleshy star, its tapering points like uncurling fingers of a fist or a flower’s thick petals blossoming. Ridged with thin ribs of bone, edged with hooked slivers, the segments fanned out and splayed wide. Exposed tissues and pulsating veins gleamed there, wetly, sheened in colors for which the Achaeans would have had no words. At the center, a membranous orifice shone with unspeakable light.
Astyanax screamed in terror upon seeing his own father in such aspect, and screamed again as Andromache’s fair brow did the same. The nurse stepped quickly forward to pluck the crying child from his parents’ arms.
The two, Andromache and Hector, tilted their heads the one toward the other. With a slick sound, the star’s-ray segments of their brows interlaced—again, like fingers, those of two hands brought together.
They met at the threshold, and then he drew her into him. His senses were hers, she a rider in the chariot of his body. Not a driver; the reins were beyond her reach, the horses not hers to control. A passenger, one who could but hold on and observe.
Her own body, of which she remained dimly aware, stepped back as if sleep-walking or under some trance. She watched herself through Hector’s eyes, saw her brow close and the fair skin mend seamlessly. The nurse guided that figure of Andromache away, taking her and the child back to their house.
And Hector, bold Hector, his brow also shut and his shining helm once more in place upon his head, went on toward the gates of Ithilium. Andromache felt the vigor and power of him, a man’s strong limbs and sinews, a man above all other men of Troy.
He encountered along the way his brother, Paris, that wretched bringer of troubles who had caused the city’s misfortune. Paris, rescued by Shub-Niggurath from single combat against Menelaus, where he otherwise surely would have died … sent in safety to his bedchamber to dally with Helen while other Trojans fought his battles for him.
Now Paris did go, and fight, and fared well in the violent encounters. And Hector fared better still, between them destroying a number of their foes. Andromache shared in his senses. She heard the clangor and shouts, smelled the sweat and blood-spray. She felt the hard impact of bronze, the weight of armor and shield. She saw Greek faces, flowing-haired or bearded, twisted in fury, contorted with the agonies of their wounds.
With losses so heavy upon both sides, the gods again intervened, this time to encourage another meeting in single combat, man against man. Hector issued the challenge to save lives of his countrymen, and it was gigantic Ajax, immense among the Achaeans, to accept.
Andromache, silent passenger that she was, rode out that dreadful duel, which proved so evenly matched that dusk came with both Ajax and Hector scarcely scratched. They resolved to give way to the night-time, resuming their struggle by daylight, when one must ev
entually gain victory over the other.
Yet it was not to be so. Animosities were stirred, hatreds rekindled. Paris, despite the urgings of his fellow Trojans, refused to return Helen. His stubbornness fanned the flames of anger burning in the bosom of Agamemnon and Menelaus.
War raged on again.
Arrows tore into thigh-muscles, and shoulders, and punctured throats like wine-skins gushing generously their contents. Bronze spear-heads drove through shields and corselets and broad war-belts. The clamor was incessant. Several sons of kingly Priam and bright princes of the Achaeans were cut down by sword-blades in the close confines. War-cries rang forth. It was horses and fire, the nodding of crests atop helms, the frenzy of multitudes. Like lions and like ravening dogs, they fought. Like wild oxen, they stampeded. Bodies dropped with the clatter of armor and the life fleeing from their eyes as the dark mists descended.
Unwilling to leave her beloved Hector, Andromache endured with him those full horrors and furies.
Word came, a rumor, that the Myrmidons had joined the field. Led, it was said, by Achilles, who had relented his wrathful brooding at last. The first proved true; the Myrmidons came fiercely to battle. As for the second, it was not Achilles himself but his true companion Patroclus, wearing the very armor of Achilles, fighting in his stead.
In Achilles’ stead, but not with his skill, which was unmatched. The bravery, luck, and foolishness of Patroclus killed many men, but could not sustain him for long. A thrown javelin struck him a sore wound, and, as he sought desperate escape, it was there that Hector found him. He stabbed his spear into the depth of Patroclus’ belly and pushed the sharp bronze clear through to emerge between the bony knobs of the spine.
He stripped Patroclus naked of the armor of Achilles, and would have severed the head from his neck and dragged off his body to feed the dogs of Troy, but for the vengeful arrival of huge Ajax and Menelaus of the loud war-cry. Hector fell back with his victorious prize. The armies of the Greeks, at the loss of Patroclus, lost their weariness as well and came back with a roaring thunder. They fought to defend the body of Patroclus, and the Trojans fought with equal fervor to claim it.
More brutally than ever, the war continued raging on.
Some swift-footed messenger, or winged words of the gods, must have brought the news to the ears of Achilles where he sat darkly brooding by his ships. For, in a suddenness, he was among them.
The fine armor which Patroclus had donned and Hector had taken was replaced now by even finer, by bright and brilliant god-forged stuff more beautiful than any man had ever seen. He sprang upon the Trojans with a ghastly cry. The first of them he slew, he struck down the middle so that the corpse fell in two pieces, writhing with tentacles and the ichor flew in a high arc.
Hector saw this, and through his eyes Andromache saw it too. They saw also the youngest and fairest of Priam’s sons, Polydorus, most beloved, the marks of his strange blood nowhere near yet upon him and ageless lifespans stretching out before. Priam had forbidden him to go to battle, but to stay instead within Ithilium’s strong walls. Yet here he was, having disobeyed their kingly father in youthful excitement, and it would cost him dearly.
Achilles hurled the spear far-shadowing, crafted by Hephaestus, smith of the gods. It took Polydorus at the small of the back, where the war-belt’s golden clasps joined, and carried straight on through to push his bowels out at the navel. Polydorus dropped to one knee, groaning, catching at his entrails with his hands as the mists closed over him, when he should have lived long centuries before following his ancestors to the eternal palaces beneath the seas.
Giving such a cry that he might have borne the fatal wound himself, Hector ran to face Achilles, hefting his bronze spear like a blazing flame.
Andromache, also, would have voiced a cry, but could not, not with her body resting senseless within their house in Troy. She would have implored her dear husband with every persuasion to turn him from this course, fearing that the time of Hector’s death loomed near, but neither could she do this.
They clashed with great violence as the battle swirled and stormed around them, as countless men went dying to the earth. Thrice, Hector broke from the combat and thrice Achilles pursued him with hard-minded tenacity. Each time, Andromache wished he might retreat within the walls. Each time, he did not.
Then, at the very gates of Ithilium, the two met again … and there, full within sight of those looking on in dismay from the ramparts, Olympian-armed Achilles struck his bronze-tipped spear above the collarbones, into the soft part of Hector’s neck.
The rending stroke drove the life from his body. Andromache, still having the lend of his senses, felt both the bright pain and its swift surcease, and perceived how the dark mists came over her husband.
Yet she could not withdraw. Some power, some spell of the god-forged weapon, held her there, beyond the threshold, bound to her husband’s dead flesh, entrapped as pine-tar might entrap a hapless fly.
Hector, gone now, spirit flown to the eternal blackness between stars, knew nothing of the indignities next inflicted upon his sorrowful remains. But she was less fortunate. Voiceless, she wailed as Hector’s armor and tunic were stripped away. The Achaeans, slinking dogs in their boldness, jabbed at the corpse with their own spears. They laughed. They mocked his nakedness, and how much less fearsome this prince of Troy was than they had thought.
Next, to her even greater horror and humiliation and pain, Achilles tied oxhide ropes tight around Hector’s bare ankles. Peleus’ son sprang into his chariot, lashed the fast horses, and set off at full speed around the walls of the city. He dragged behind him the once-proud Hector, bouncing and twisting and rolling in the rough dirt, and over brambles and rocky places. A seething dust-cloud arose in the chariot’s wake.
Each scrape of the sand, each cut of the stone, each bone-rattling thud, Andromache felt. She saw the land and sky jolting, veering, swapping places. The taste of grit filled her mouth. She could not break free. She could not close Yog-Sothoth’s way and return to her own body, her own senses.
A shrieking madness consumed her, and she went with it gladly.
Some unknown time later, her wits seemed to return. She became aware of the cold, stiff weight of Hector’s limbs … lungs unmoved by breath … the vital fluids sunk and pooled thick. His eyes had been shut, showing her nothing through them. One ear had been mangled, half-torn and clogged with dirt. With the other, she heard someone speaking suppliant words.
It was Priam, wise old Priam, Ithilium’s king, tamer of shoggoths, Hector’s father. How he had come here, to the camp of the enemy, she could not guess. Yet, come he had, and by the sounds of it he bent himself at Achilles’ knee, clasping and kissing the very hands that had killed so many of his sons, to implore that the body of this one, the best and dearest of them, be given back to his people.
“Remember your own aged father,” said Priam, with the deep tides rushing in his voice. “Think of your own children; would you have them so dishonored? Left naked, left filthy, a feast for the crows? His wife lies stricken, like one near death herself. Their son cries, inconsolable. Let me take him home. Let his mother weep over him, let his sisters wash him and anoint him with oil. Let us mourn him, and bury him properly. In that, above all else, your gods and ours must agree.”
“You have stirred my pity, old one,” grim Achilles finally said. “I will consent. Take your princely son home. He fought like a lion. Honor him with a good funeral. I shall do the same for my much-loved companion Patroclus, who went to battle and died in my stead. Let us celebrate them with feasts, games and races.”
Strong men of the Myrmidons, at Achilles’ bidding, lifted the corpse of Hector from where it had been left by their lord’s shelter. Andromache noted well how they were now treating the body with care and respect. They placed it into a cart and draped it with fair cloth.
She heard Priam’s sorrowful sigh when his gaze fell upon his son. She felt the cloth turned down from Hector’s face, and the touch
of the ancient king’s hand—trembling, damp, and web-fingered—settling onto Hector’s brow.
And that touch released her, so that she was drawn back into herself. She sat up, gasping, startling Astyanax’s good nurse who had watched over both mother and child since that day of the battle.
“Give me my son,” Andromache said, extending her white arms. “We have a funeral to prepare.”
3
The Prize
Oh, that she had never seen him!
Oh, that he had never come to Sparta, led there by his goatish lust and the promise of the fecund goddess who spewed forth her teeming brood!
Paris … Paris of the divine countenance and the flowing locks … handsome Paris, golden-skinned Paris of the sea-green eyes … the muskiness and manliness of him … a look and she’d been lost.
Never mind her marriage oaths, the honor of her family, the insult to her husband. Never mind her home, her friends, her country, her precious half-grown daughter.
A look, and she’d been lost.
Even now, the thought of him sent desire melting in her loins.
Even now, as the city hung banners of mourning for his brother, as his mother and sisters harrowed their cheeks with grief.
Even now, as she loved him.
Even now, as she hated and despised him.
Paris. Paris the vain, Paris the glorious. Paris, who preened and strutted and made much boasting, but whose skills at the craft of war were much less so than at the arts of love.
Paris, shameful coward! Whiner! Bleater! Forever suckling, indulged and plump, at Shub-Niggurath’s greasy teats!
Paris, said to be almost her own equal in beauty, Helen, peerless among women.
Helen, who oftentimes hated and despised herself as well.
Oh, that curse of her face and form! Since girlhood it was her prison and her destiny. Now it was her doom.