by Ben Bova
We chatted for a few moments more, but it was clear that Helen had imparted the message she wanted me to bear back to the Achaians. Finally she rose, signaling that our meeting was ended. I got to my feet and went to the door by which I had entered the chamber. Sure enough, the guard was outside waiting to escort me back to the king’s audience hall.
No one was there except the courtier who had been with me earlier in the morning. The columned hall was empty, echoing.
“The king and royal princes are still deliberating on your message,” he whispered. “You are to wait.”
I waited. We strolled through several of the palace’s halls and chambers and finally out into the big courtyard we had come through that morning. The hot sun felt good on my bare arms.
Out of curiosity I walked across the garden to the small statue of Athene. It was barely the length of my arm, and obviously very old, weathered by many years of rain and wind. Unlike the other, grander statues, it was unpainted. Or, rather, the original paint had long since worn away and had never been replaced.
Athene. The warrior goddess was dressed in a long robe, yet carried a shield and spear. A plumed helmet rested on the back of her head, pushed up and away from her face.
I looked at that face and the breath gushed out of me. It was her face, the face of the woman I had loved. The face of the goddess that the Golden One had killed.
Chapter 11
SO it was true. The gods are not immortal. Just as the Golden One had told me. And I knew that he had not lied about the rest: The gods are neither merciful nor beneficent. They play their games and make up their own rules while we, their creatures, try to make sense of what they do to us.
The rage burned in me. They are not immortal. The gods can be killed. I can kill the Golden One. And I will, I promised myself anew. How, I did not know. When, I had no idea. But by the flames that burned inside me I swore that I would destroy him, no matter how long it took and no matter what the cost.
I swung my gaze around the graceful flowered courtyard of Priam’s palace. Yes, this is where I would start. He wants to save Troy, to make it the center of an empire that spans Europe and Asia. Then I will destroy it, crush it, slaughter its people, and burn its buildings to the ground.
“Orion.”
I blinked, as though waking from a dream. Hector stood before me. I had not seen him approaching.
“Prince Hector,” I said.
“Come with me. We have an answer for Agamemnon.
I followed him into another part of the palace. As before, Hector wore only a simple tunic, almost bare of adornment. No weapons. No jewelry. No proclamation of his rank. He carried his nobility in his person, and anyone who saw him knew instinctively that here was a man of merit and honor.
Yet, as I matched him stride for stride through the halls of the palace, I saw again that the war had taken its toll of him. His bearded face was deeply etched by lines around the mouth and eyes. His brow was creased and a permanent notch of worry had worn itself into the space between his eyebrows.
We walked to the far side of the palace and up steep narrow steps in murky darkness lit only by occasional slits of windows. Higher and higher we climbed the steep, circling stone steps, breathing hard, around and around the stairwell’s narrow confines until at last we squeezed through a low square doorway onto the platform at the top of Troy’s tallest tower.
“Aleksandros will join us shortly,” said Hector, walking over to the giant’s teeth of the battlements. It was almost noon, and hot in the glaring sun despite the stiff breeze from the sea that huffed at us and set Hector’s brown hair flowing.
From this high vantage I could see the Achaian camp, dozens of long black boats drawn up on the beach behind the sandy rampart and trench I had helped to dig barely forty-eight hours earlier. The Trojan army was camped on the plain, tents and chariots dotted across the worn-bare soil, cook fires sending thin tendrils of smoke into the crystalline sky. A fair-sized river flowed across the plain to the south and emptied into the bay. A smaller stream passed to the north. The Achaian camp’s flanks were anchored on the two riverbanks.
Beyond the gentle waves rolling up onto the beach I saw an island near the horizon, a brown hump of a worn mountain, and beyond that another hovering ghostlike in the blue hazy distance.
“Well, brother, have you told him?”
I turned and saw Aleksandros striding briskly toward us. Unlike Hector, his tunic looked as soft as silk and he wore a handsome royal-blue cloak over it. A jeweled sword was at his hip, and more jewels flashed on his fingers and at his throat. His hair and beard were carefully trimmed and gleamed with sweet-smelling oil. His face was unlined, though he was not that many years younger than his brother.
“I was waiting for you,” said Hector.
“Good! Then let me give him the news.” Smiling nastily, Aleksandros said to me, “You may tell fat Agamemnon that King Priam rejects his insulting offer. Moreover, by this time tomorrow our chariots will be riding through your camp, burning your boats and slaying your white-livered Achaians until nothing is left but ashes and bones. Our dogs will feast well tomorrow night.”
I kept my face immobile.
Hector made the tiniest shake of his head, then laid a restraining hand on his brother’s blue-cloaked shoulder. “Our father is not feeling well enough to see you again. And although my brother’s hot words may seem insulting, the answer that we have for Agamemnon is that we reject his offer of peace.”
“And any offer that includes returning my wife to the barbarian!” Aleksandros snapped.
“Then we will have war again tomorrow,” I said.
“Indeed we will,” said Aleksandros.
“Do you really think you are strong enough to break through the Achaian defenses and burn their fleet?”
“The gods will decide,” Hector replied.
“In our favor,” added Aleksandros.
I was beginning to dislike this boastful young man. “It is one thing to fight from chariots on this plain,” I gestured toward the battlefield bounded by the beach, the two rivers, and the bluff on which the city stood. “It is another to break into the Achaian camp and fight their entire host on foot. That will not be a battle of hero against hero. Every man in the Achaian camp will be fighting for his life.”
“Don’t you think we’re fighting for our lives?” Aleksandros retorted. “And the lives of our wives and children?”
“I don’t think you can wipe out the Achaians,” I insisted. “Not with the forces I see camped on the plain.”
Aleksandros laughed. “You are looking in the wrong direction, barbarian. Look there, instead!”
He pointed inland, toward the distant wooded hills and the mountains that bulked beyond them, “There lies the empire of the Hatti,” Aleksandros said. “It spreads from this shore far to the east and south. The Hatti High King has fought wars with the Egyptians, Orion. And won them! He is our ally.”
I drew the obvious conclusion. “You expect help from him.”
“It is already on the way. We put up with the Achaian raids on the farms and towns nearby, but when pompous Agamemnon landed his army here, we sent a delegation to the High King of the Hatti, in his capital at Hattusas.”
Hector said calmly, “I saw that city when I was a lad, Orion. It could swallow Troy ten times over. It is immense, and the power of the Hatti makes it so.”
I said nothing.
“So far we have fought the Achaians only with the help of our neighbors, the Dardanians and other peoples of the Troad,” Aleksandros resumed. “But when the Hatti send their troops to aid us, Agamemnon’s army will be utterly crushed.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
Before Aleksandros could answer, Hector said, “Because we have decided to make Agamemnon a counter offer, Orion. We did not seek this war. We prefer peace, and the gentler arts of commerce and trade, to the blood and fire of battle.”
“But we don’t fear battle!” Aleksandro
s insisted.
Silencing his brother with a stern glance, Hector continued, “King Priam offers a simple plan for peace. If Agamemnon will remove his army and return to Achaia, my father the king offers to negotiate a new treaty of friendship and trade that will allow Mycenae free passage of the Hellespont.”
“Mycenae?” I asked. “What about the other Achaian cities: Ithaca, Nestor’s Pylos, Tiryns…”
“Mycenae,” repeated Hector. “As High King, Agamemnon can make his own agreements with the other Achaian cities. As long as the trade is carried in Mycenaean boats, Troy will make no objection.”
A masterful stroke of diplomacy! Dangle the carrot of free passage through the straits to Agamemnon, and to him alone, so that he will have a commanding position among the other Achaian powers. At the very least, it should set up an argument among the various Achaian petty kings that will destroy their ability to make a united war against Troy. Masterful.
“I will take this message to Agamemnon,” I lied.
“Do that,” snapped Aleksandros. “And tell the greedy High King that if he does not accept our offer by dawn tomorrow, his body will be feeding kites and dogs by sunset.”
I stared at him. He tried to meet my gaze, but after a moment he looked away.
“We will expect an answer by sunrise tomorrow,” Hector said. “If our offer is not accepted, we will force the Achaian camp. Even if we are not successful in that, it is only a matter of a few days before the Hatti army reaches us.”
“We’ve had messages from smoke signals,” Aleksandros boasted. “Their army has been seen within a three-day march of our walls.”
I looked back to Hector. He nodded and I believed him.
“There has been enough killing,” Hector said. “It is time to make peace. Agamemnon can return to Mycenae with honor. We make him a generous offer.”
“But Helen stays with me!” Aleksandros added.
I had to smile at that. I could hardly blame him for wanting to keep her.
Hector gave me a four-man guard of honor that escorted me out the same Scaean gate I had entered the night before. Now I could see the massive walls of Troy close-up. Almost I could believe that gods had helped to build them. Immense blocks of stone were wedged and fitted together to a height of more than nine meters, with high square towers surmounting them at the major gates and corners. The walls sloped outward, so that they were thickest at ground level.
Since the city was built on the bluff overlooking the plain of Ilios, the attacking army would have to fight its way uphill before ever reaching the walls.
I returned to the Achaian camp to find old Poletes waiting at the makeshift gate for me.
“What news do you bring?” he asked me eagerly. I realized that his voice, though thin and grating, had none of the rasping and wheezing quality that had afflicted Priam.
“Nothing good,” I said. “There will be battle tomorrow.”
Poletes’s skinny shoulders slumped beneath his worn tunic. “The fools. The bloody fools.”
I knew better, but I did not reveal it. There would be battle tomorrow because I would not let the two sides know that each side was prepared to make peace.
I went straight to Odysseus, with Poletes skipping beside me, his knobby legs working overtime to keep pace with me. Soldiers and noblemen alike stared at me, reading in my grim face the news I brought from Troy. The women looked too, then turned away, knowing that tomorrow would bring blood and carnage and terror. Many of them were natives of this land, and hoped to be freed of bondage by the Trojan soldiery. But they knew, I think, that in the frenzy and bloodlust of battle, their chances of being raped and put to the sword were much more likely than their chances of being rescued and returned to their rightful households.
Odysseus’s quarters were on the deck of his boat. He received me alone, dismissing his aides and servants to hear my report. He was naked and wet from his morning swim, rubbing himself briskly with a rough towel. Sitting on a three-legged stool, he rested his back against the boat’s only mast. The musty canvas that had served as a tent when it had been raining was folded back now that the hot sun was shining, but his bearded face was as dark and foreboding as any storm cloud as I told him that Priam and his sons rejected the Achaian peace terms.
“They offered no counter terms?” he asked, once I had finished my report.
Without hesitating, I lied, “None. Aleksandros said he would never surrender Helen under any circumstances.”
“Nothing else?”
“He and Prince Hector told me that a Hatti army is marching to their assistance.”
Odysseus’s eyes widened. “What? How far are they from here?”
“A few days’ march, from what Aleksandros said.”
He tugged at his beard, real consternation in his face. “That cannot be,” he muttered. “It cannot be!”
I waited in silence, and looked out across the rows of beached boats. Each of them had its mast in place, as if the crews were making ready to sail. The masts had not been up the day before.
Finally Odysseus jumped to his feet. “Come with me,” he said urgently. “Agamemnon must hear of this.”
Chapter 12
“THE Hatti are marching here? To aid Priam?” Agamemnon piped in his high squeaking voice. “Impossible! It can’t be true!”
The High King looked startled, even frightened. He sat at the head of the council, his right shoulder swathed in strips of cloth smeared with blood and some oily poultice.
He was broad of shoulder and body, built like a squat turret, round and thick from neck to hips. He wore a coat of gilded mail over his tunic, and a harness of gleaming leather over that, with silver buckles and ornaments. A jeweled sword hung at his side. Even his legs were encased in elaborately decorated bronze greaves, buckled in silver. His sandals had gold tassels on their thongs.
All in all, Agamemnon looked as if he were dressed for battle rather than a council of his chief lieutenants, the kings and princes of the various Achaian tribes.
But, knowing the Achaians and their penchant for argument, perhaps he hoped to awe them with his panoply. Or perhaps he thought he was going into a battle.
Thirty-two men sat in a circle around the small hearth fire in Agamemnon’s hut, the leaders of the Achaian contingents. Every group allied to Agamemnon and his brother Menalaos was there, although the Myrmidones were represented by Patrokles, rather than Achilles. I sat behind Odysseus, who was placed two seats down on the High King’s right, so I had the opportunity to study Agamemnon closely.
There was precious little nobility in the features of the High King. Like his body, his face was broad and heavy, with a wide stub of a nose, a thick brow, and deep-set eyes that seemed to look out at the world with suspicion and resentment. His hair and beard were just beginning to turn gray, but they were well combed and glistening with fresh oil perfumed so heavily that it made my nostrils itch, even from where I sat.
He held a bronze scepter in his left hand; his right rested limply on his lap. The one rule of sanity and order in the council meeting, apparently, was that only the man holding the scepter was allowed to speak.
“I have the sworn word of Hattusilis himself, High King of the Hatti, that he will not interfere in our war against Troy,” Agamemnon said petulantly. “In writing!” he added.
“I have seen the agreement,” vouched Menalaos, his brother.
Several of the kings and princes nodded their heads in acceptance, but big, blunt Ajax, sitting halfway down the circle, spoke up.
“Many of us have never seen the document sent by the Hatti High King.”
Agamemnon sighed, almost girlishly, and turned to the servant hovering behind his chair. He immediately went to a far corner of the hut, where a table and several chests had been clustered together to form something like an office.
The High King’s hut was larger than Achilles’s, but not as luxurious. The log walls were bare, for the most part, although the king’s bed was hung with rich ta
pestries. For all his bluster, Agamemnon kept no dais. He sat at the same level with the rest of us. The loot of dozens of towns was scattered around the hut: armor, jeweled swords, long spears with gleaming bronze points, iron and bronze tripods, chests that must have contained much gold and jewelry. The High King had cleared the hut of women and other slaves. None were here except the council and a few scribes and servants.
The servant produced a baked clay tablet covered with cuneiform inscriptions. Agamemnon passed it around the full circle of councilmen. Each man inspected it carefully, although it seemed to me that hardly any of them could read it. As if to prove my suspicion, Agamemnon had the servant read it aloud once it had returned to his hands.
The document was a masterpiece of diplomatic phrasing. It greeted Agamemnon as a fellow High King, and I could see his chest swell pridefully as the words were spoken. The High King of the Hatti, ruler of all the lands from the shore of the Aegean to the ancient walls of Jericho (by his own humble admission), recognized the justice of the Achaian grievance against Troy and promised not to interfere in its settlement. Of course, the wording was much more roundabout than that, but the meaning seemed clear enough. Even a Trojan would have to agree that Hattusilis had promised Agamemnon that he would not help Troy.
“Yet the Trojans claim that a Hatti army is within a few days’ march, coming to their aid,” said Odysseus.
“Pardon me, King of Ithaca,” said old Nestor, sitting between Odysseus and Agamemnon, “but you do not have the scepter and therefore you are speaking out of turn.”
Odysseus smiled at the whitebeard. “Neither do you, King of Pylos,” he said mildly.
“What are they saying?” shouted one of the princes on the other side of the circle. “I can’t hear them!”
Agamemnon handed the scepter to Odysseus, who stood up and repeated his statement in a clear voice.
Ajax blurted, “How do we know this is true?”
They argued back and forth, then finally commanded me to tell them exactly what had been told to me. I got to my feet and repeated the words of Aleksandros and Hector.