by Dan Simmons
The one thing Agamemnon will not offer Achilles is his apology. The son of Atreus is still too proud to bow. “Let him bow down to me!” he’ll shout at Nestor, Odysseus, Diomedes and the other captains in a few hours. “I am the greater king, I am the elder born, and, I claim, the greater man.”
Odysseus and the other will see a way out despite Agamemnon’s arrogance. They realize that if they bring the message of Briseis’ return and all these other marvelous gifts—and just happen to leave out the “I’m the greater man” bit—there’s a chance that Achilles might rejoin the fight. At least this embassy to Achilles offers a ray of hope.
But here the complicated part begins—here the fulcrum may yet be found.
As a scholar, I know in my soul that the embassy to Achilles is the heart and pivot of the Iliad. Achilles’ decisions upon hearing the embassy’s entreaties will determine the flow of all future events—the death of Hector, the subsequent death of Achilles, the fall of Ilium.
But here’s the tricky part. Homer chooses his language very carefully—perhaps more carefully than any other storyteller in history. He tells us that Nestor will name five men for the embassy to Achilles—Phoenix, Big Ajax, Odysseus, Odios, and Eurybates. The last two are mere heralds, decorations for the sake of protocol, and will not walk to Achilles’ tent with the real ambassadors nor take part in the discussion there.
The problem here is that Phoenix is an odd choice—he hasn’t appeared in the story before, he’s more of a Myrmidon tutor and retainer to Achilles than a commander, and it makes little sense that he would be sent to persuade his master. To top that off, when the ambassadors are walking along the ocean’s edge—“where the battle line of breakers crash and drag”—on their way to Achilles’ tent, the verb form that Homer uses is a dual form—a Greek verb set between singular and plural always relating to two people—in this case, Ajax and Odysseus. Homer uses seven other words that, in the Greek of his day—this day—relate to two men, not three.
Where’s Phoenix during this walk from Agamemnon’s camp to Achilles’ part of the encampment? Is he somehow already in Achilles’ tent waiting for the embassy? That makes little sense.
A lot of scholars, before and during my time on earth, argued that Phoenix was a clumsy addition to the tale, a character added centuries later, which explains the dual verb form, but this theory ignores the fact that Phoenix will give the longest and most complex argument of the three ambassadors. His speech is so wonderfully digressive and complicated that it reeks of Homer.
It’s as if the blind poet himself had been confused about whether there were two or three emissaries to Achilles and what, exactly, Phoenix’s role was in the conversation that would decide all the players’ fates.
I have a few hours to think about this.
If you want to change our fates, you must find the fulcrum.
But that’s hours in my future. It’s still mid-afternoon here, and the Trojans are pausing on the Ilium-side of the Achaeans’ moat while the Greeks mill around like ants behind their wall of rocks and sharpened stakes. Still morphed as a sweaty Achaean spearman, I manage to get close to Agamemnon as the king first berates his men and then pleas for Zeus’s aid in their darkest hour.
“Shame on all of you!” shouts the son of Atreus at his bedraggled army. Only a hundredth of the men can hear him, of course, ancient acoustics being what they are, but Agamemnon has a powerful voice and those in the back pass the message on to others.
“Shame! Disgrace! You dress like splendid warriors, but it’s pure sham! You vowed to burn this city and you gorged yourself on cattle—bought at my expense!—and drank to the full those brimming bowls of wine—bought and shipped here at my expense!—and now look at you! Beaten rabble! You bragged that each of you could stand up to a hundred Trojans—two hundred!—and now you’re no match for one mortal man—Hector.
“Any minute Hector will be here with his hordes, gutting our ships with blazing fire, and this vaunted army of . . . heroes . . .”—Agamemnon all but spits the word—“will be fleeing home to wife and kids . . . at my expense!”
Agamemnon gives up on the army and lifts his hands to the southern sky, toward Mount Ida, from where the storms and thunder and lightning bolts have come. “Father Zeus, how can you tear away my glory so? How have I offended thee? Not once—I swear, not a single time!—have I passed a shrine of yours, not even on our ocean voyage here, but did I stop and burn the fat and thighs of oxen to your glory. Our prayer was simple—to raze Ilium’s walls to its roots, kill its heroes, rape its women, enslave its people. Is that too much to ask?
“Father, fulfill this prayer for me: let my men escape with their lives—at least that. Don’t let Hector and these Trojans beat us like rented mules!”
I’ve heard Agamemnon give more eloquent speeches—hell, all of the speeches I’ve heard from him have been more eloquent than this, and I understand Homer’s need to rewrite all this—but at that second a miracle occurs. Or at least the Achaeans take it as a miracle.
Out of nowhere, an eagle appears, flying from the south, a huge eagle, carrying a fawn in its talons.
The mob who had been surging toward their ships and safety on the seas and who paused only briefly for Agamemnon’s speech freeze in place and point at the sight of this.
The eagle soars, circles, dips lower, and drops the still-kicking fawn a hundred feet to a sandy bump right at the base of the stone altar the Achaeans had raised to Zeus upon their landing so many years ago.
That does it. After fifteen seconds of stunned silence, a roar goes up from the men—men beaten into cowardice ten minutes earlier, but a fighting mob now, hearts and hands strengthened by this clear sign of forgiveness and approval from Zeus—and without further ado, fifty thousand Achaeans and Argives and all the rest surge back into formation behind their captains, horses are re-tethered to chariots, chariots are driven out across the earth-bridges still spanning the defensive trenches, and the battle is on again.
It becomes the hour of the archer.
Although Diomedes leads the counterattack, followed closely by the Atrides, Agamemnon and Menelaus, followed in turn by Big Ajax and Little Ajax, and although these heroes take their toll on the Trojans in spearcasts and shortsword clashes, the fighting now is centered around the Achaean archer Teucer, bastard son of Telamon and half-brother to Big Ajax.
Teucer has always been considered a master-archer, and I’ve seen him shoot dozens of Trojans over the years, but this is his day in the limelight. He and Ajax get into a rhythm whereby Teucer crouches under the wall of his half-brother’s shield—Big Ajax uses a giant rectangular shield that military historians say wasn’t even in use during the time of the Trojan War—and when Ajax lifts the shield, Teucer fires from beneath it into the Trojan ranks some sixty yards away. On this day he can’t seem to miss his mark.
First he kills Orsilochus, putting a barbed arrow in the short man’s heart. Then he kills Ophelestes, putting a point through the captain’s right eye when the Trojan peeks above his rawhide shield. Then Daetor and Chromius fall mortally wounded from two fast, perfectly placed shots. Each time Teucer fires, the Trojans unleash their own arrows and spears in a vain attempt to kill the archer, but Big Ajax crouches over both of them and his massive shield deflects every missile.
The Trojan volleys pause, Ajax lifts his shield, and Teucer shoots Lycophontes, prince of his distant city, but just wounds the man. As Lycophontes’ captains rush to his aid, Teucer puts a second arrow into the fallen man’s liver.
Polymaeon’s son, Amopaon, falls next, Teucer’s shaft through his throat. Blood fountains five feet high and the powerful Amopaon tries to rise, but the arrow has pinned him to the ground, and he bleeds out in less than a minute, his body kicking and spasming ever more weakly. The Achaeans cheer. I know . . . knew . . . Amopaon. The Trojan used to eat in the little open restaurant where Nightenhelser and I liked to meet, and we’d spoken many a time of trivial things. He told me once that his father, Polymae
on, had known Odysseus in friendlier times, and once, when traveling to Ithaca and joining the friendly Greeks on a hunt, Polymaeon had killed a wild boar that had deeply gored Odysseus’ leg and would have killed him if Polymaeon’s spearcast had missed its mark. Amopaon told me that Odysseus bears the scar to this day.
Ajax crouches, holding his massive metal shield over him and his half-brother like a roof, and Trojan arrows rattle against it. Ajax rises, lifts the shield, and Teucer kills Melanippus—eighty yards away—with a shot that enters the man’s groin and protrudes from his anus as the Trojan falls. His comrades step away and grimace as Melanippus writhes on the ground and dies. The Achaeans cheer again.
Agamemnon swings down off his chariot and shouts encouragement at Teucer, promising the archer second choice of tripods or purebred teams of horses—if Zeus and Athena ever allow him to plunder the treasure troves of Troy, he says—and then promises Teucer a beautiful Trojan woman to bed as well, perhaps Hector’s wife, Andromache.
Teucer is angered by Agamemnon’s offer. “Son of Atreus, do you think I’ll try any harder than I already am, spurred on by your talk of plunder? I’m firing as fast and accurately as I can. Eight arrows—eight kills.”
“Shoot at Hector!” cries Agamemnon.
“I have been shooting at Hector,” screams Teucer, his face red. “All this time—Hector’s been my target. I just can’t hit the son of a bitch!”
Agamemnon falls silent.
As if responding to the challenge, Hector suddenly urges his chariot to the front of the Trojan ranks, trying to rally his men who’ve lost heart because of the archer’s slaughter.
Ajax doesn’t bother to lift his shield this time, because Teucer stands, goes to full draw, takes careful aim at Hector, and lets fly.
The shaft misses Hector’s heart by a hand’s breadth, striking Gorgythion as that son of Priam steps behind Hector’s chariot. The big man stops, looks surprised, stares down at the protruding shaft and feathers as if he is the butt of some barracks joke, but then Gorgythion’s head appears to become too heavy for his massive neck and falls limp to his shoulder as the weight of his helmet pulls it down; then Gorgythion falls dead in the blood-muddied sand.
“Damn!” says Teucer and fires again. Hector is the closest of all the Trojans now, turned full-torso toward Teucer.
This arrow catches Archeptolemus, Hector’s driver, full in the chest. The horses—war-trained as they are—rear and leap ahead as Archeptolemus’ blood geysers onto their flanks, and the young man pitches backward and off and into the dust.
“Cebriones!” cries Hector, grabbing the reins and calling to his brother—another bastard son of profligate Priam—to be his driver. Cebriones leaps up onto the chariot just as Hector jumps down. Enraged, beside himself with fury and grief at the death of his faithful Archeptolemus, Hector runs into no-man’s-land—a clear target for Teucer—and grabs the largest, sharpest rock he can lift in one hand.
Hector seems to have forgotten all the finesse of warfare he’s bragged about so many times and has reverted to caveman tactics, lifting the rock and cocking his left arm far back, looking like nothing so much—I think—as Sandy Koufax preparing to unleash a pitch. I haven’t noticed until today that Hector is ambidextrous.
Teucer sees his chance, grabs another arrow from his quiver, and draws full back, aiming at Hector’s heart, sure he can get off a shot, perhaps two, before Hector throws.
He’s wrong. Hector pitches hard, fast, flat, and accurately.
The rock hits Teucer in the collarbone, just beside the throat, an instant before the archer releases the arrow. Bones crack. Tendons rip. Teucer’s hand goes limp, the bowstring snaps, and the arrow buries itself in the ground between the archer’s sandaled feet.
Hector rushes forward, scattering Achaeans like chaff, and the Trojan archers fire arrow after arrow at the fallen Teucer, but Big Ajax doesn’t abandon his brother; he covers him with his wall of a shield while other Achaeans fight off the Trojan infantry. At Ajax’s call—bellow, really—Mecisteus and Alastor rush forward and carry the moaning, semiconscious Achaean archer back across the trench-bridge to relative safety in the shadow of the hollow ships.
But Teucer’s fifteen minutes of fame are up.
Things get worse for the Greeks very fast after this. Hector sees his survival as another sign of Zeus’s love and approval and leads his men in charge after charge against the dispirited, retreating Achaeans.
Agamemnon, Menelaus, and the other lords who’d led their men into joyous combat just hours before are truly beaten now. The Achaeans are too routed at first even to man their defenses along the trench and stakes and makeshift wall, and the only thing that stops the Trojans from burning the ships right now is the setting sun and the sudden fall of darkness.
While the Achaeans mill about in confusion, some of the men already readying their ships for departure, others sitting shell-shocked and vacant-eyed, Hector does his Henry V thing, roaming tirelessly up and down the Trojan ranks, urging his men on to more carnage come the dawn, sending men back to the city to herd cattle out for slaughter and sacrifice and feasting, ordering in rations of honeyed wine, calling up the wagons of fresh-baked bread that the ravenous Trojans attack as if it were Agamemnon himself, and giving the command to set hundreds of watchfires just beyond the Achaean defenses, so the fearful Greeks will get no sleep this night. I don my Hades Helmet and walk invisible among the Trojans.
“Tomorrow,” cries Hector to his cheering men, “I’ll gut Diomedes like a flopping fish in front of his men if he doesn’t choose to flee tonight. I’ll break his spine with the tip of my spear and we’ll nail the braggart’s head above the Scaean Gates!”
The Trojans roar. The watchfires send sparks flying up toward the hard-burning stars. Invisible to gods and men, I recross the trench bridge, wind my way through the sharpened stakes, and walk again amongst the dispirited Greeks.
For me, it’s time for truth or consequences. Agamemnon’s already called the meeting of his captains and they’re arguing courses of immediate action—flee or send an embassy to Achilles?
There’s no turning back now. I morph into the form of Phoenix, Achilles’ faithful Myrmidon tutor and friend, and walk across the cooling sand to join the council.
If you’re going to change our fates, you must find the fulcrum.
28
The Mediterranean Basin
Savi followed the Atlantic Breach across the ocean, sometimes flying lower than the surface, hopping and dipping the sonie every few miles to avoid the connecting current cones that crisscrossed the Breach like transparent pipes in a long green hallway.
Lying prone to the left of Savi—seeing Harman lying in his spot to her right—Daeman was aware of the older man’s grim expression and of the empty passenger slots behind them. Daeman was thinking about the last twenty-four hours.
Harman and Ada had seemed at odds when they’d flown away from the big-tree place. At first that had pleased Daeman. He didn’t know what the falling-out had been about, of course, but it had been obvious that both were agitated after their walk in the woods—Ada looking cool and distant but inwardly seething, Harman visibly confused. But after the hours of flying to Ardis and the events there—and Daeman’s decision to continue with this nonsense quest—the tension between Harman and Ada seemed like just another thing to worry about.
It had been late afternoon when they’d arrived at Ardis. The estate and grounds looked different from the air, at least to Daeman, although the layout of the hills and forest and meadows and river were just as he remembered. Whenever he thought of their picnic down to the river—to Hannah’s silly metal-pouring exhibition—he thought of the attacking dinosaur and his heart began to pound.
“This area used to be called Ohio in the last part of the Lost Age,” said Savi as they circled and then flew lower. “I think.”
“I thought it was called North America,” said Harman.
“That, too,” said the old woman. “The
y had a surplus of names for places.”
They landed about a quarter of a mile from Ardis Hall, in a pasture north of a line of screening trees. Daeman still had to use the toilet, but he was damned if he’d walk all that way to the estate if there was any chance of dinosaurs being in the area.
“It’s safe,” Ada said brusquely when she saw him hesitate, the only one still lying on the sonie. “The voynix patrol a perimeter within two or three miles of the hall.”
“How far from the house was Hannah’s hot-metal picnic?” asked Daeman.
“Three and a half miles,” said Hannah. The young woman was standing near Odysseus behind the sonie.
Ada turned to Savi. “Are you sure you won’t come up to the house?”
“I can’t,” said the old woman. She extended her hand and after a second, Ada took it. Daeman had never seen women shake hands before. “I’ll wait here for Harman and Daeman to return,” said Savi.
Ada looked at Harman. “You’re coming up to Ardis for a minute, aren’t you?”
“Just to say good-bye.” The two held their intense gaze.
“Can we just go?” said Daeman, hearing the whine in his own voice. He didn’t care. He had to go.
Everyone except Savi had started walking toward the distant house then, through the field of waist-high grass, past the occasional head of cattle—Daeman gave each of the cows a wide berth, since he wasn’t comfortable around large animals—when suddenly a lone voynix stepped out of the treeline ahead of them.
“It’s about time,” said Daeman. “This walking is ridiculous.” He gestured to the iron-and-leather form. “You! Go back to the hall and bring back two large carrioles to transport us there!”
Incredibly, the voynix ignored Daeman and kept walking toward the five humans—or to be more precise, toward Odysseus.
The old bearded man pushed Hannah away from him as the eyeless voynix slowly approached.