Troy: A Brand of Fire

by Ben Blake

  *

  Really, a man’s heart could burst with pride.

  He never liked it when his son went away. His eldest son, the one he suspected every father loved best, because he was the first proof of a man’s virility. You never admitted it though, never let your other children feel less loved. As a king the pressure was greater yet, because what you could and couldn’t show was constrained by the twin chains of duty and honour. You made do with few words, an occasional gesture, and hoped they were enough.

  Because of that it was a comfort to see that the councillors felt his son’s absence too, and the city’s wider population. They might not love him, not the way a father did, but there was always a sense that Troy was holding its breath, and praying, until the heir came back home.

  He was home. Citizens had poured into the streets to chant his name, and now it rose like a cry to the gods from ten thousand throats, echoing off stone: “Hector! Hector! Hector!”

  The sound carried clearly here, in the megaron of the king’s palace in the Pergamos, the great citadel of Troy. The palace had been designed to allow views of the lower city from its balconies, but to keep out unwanted noise. Still, when every citizen of Troy was in the streets and shouting, solid stone couldn’t have kept it out entirely. Nor would Priam have wanted it to. It proved how much the city loved the man who would next be king.

  The main doors to the throne room were closed. They were inch-thick cedar from Phoenicia, enamelled with a diamond pattern in the royal colours of blue and gold. They would not stand up long against attack, but what enemy could reach here, into the living heart of Troy? Even mighty Heracles had balked at that prospect, when he and the villain Telamon had come twenty years before. But the doors were decorative, not defensive. A soldier stood at each side, both wearing breastplates in the yellow lacquer of the Palladians; it was their turn to stand guard today.

  The Palladians were going to strut about this for days. They had stood the watch when Hector came home.

  People still trickled into the chamber though, through a small door set discreetly behind a statue of Tarhun close to one corner. The god was shown with one hand raised high, clutching a thunderbolt as though about to cast. As a child Priam had been afraid the statue would come to life and throw that bolt at him; it was that realistic. He used to touch it to make sure it was still stone, then snatch his hand back. The fancy had passed quickly enough, of course, but he still touched the statue whenever he entered the megaron, these days to invoke the blessing of the god on all he tried to do here.

  “I’ve tried to be a good shepherd to my people,” he said to the person standing beside him. “Have I succeeded?”

  She rolled her eyes in theatrical amusement. “You have. As I’ve told you before. And if you ask me that one more time, my dear, I will have to swipe you with a flyswatter.”

  Priam snorted. He’d loved her a little from the first time he saw her, this bold-faced wife of his, and she’d never betrayed a trust or shaken his faith in her. He still didn’t know if she’d loved him from the start, though. She wouldn’t tell him. When he asked – which he rarely did, now – Hecuba just smiled an enigmatic smile and changed the subject.

  She loved him now, as much as he did her. He had come to understand, with age, that the details didn’t matter.

  Someone rapped against the doors from the far side. The two Palladian guards looked to Priam and waited for his nod, then unbarred the doors and swung them open.

  Hector stood framed in the centre of the corridor, a large man still wearing a cuirass lacquered in the royal colours, the blue and gold smeared with dust from the road. His sandy hair was damp from being confined under the helmet held by the straps in one hand. Beside and behind him was another man, smaller, half hidden by the prince. Priam couldn’t see who he was.

  “Father,” Hector said. His voice was deep and sure. He stepped into the megaron and went down on both knees, hands on the floor as he touched the tiles with his forehead. He was heir to the city; one day Troy would kneel to him, and its treasuries and sanctuaries open their doors at his approach. But that day had not yet come, and until it did there were formalities to observe.

  “Rise,” Priam said, and let himself smile. There was a limit to formality, after all. “And welcome home, son.”

  Hector sat up and then stood, all in one smooth motion. He’d always been an agile child, and training had made the man even more athletic. And he didn’t seem to have suffered any injuries while he was away. Priam’s eyes searched and found nothing. He began to relax a little.

  “It’s good to be home,” Hector said. “We were so far east by midsummer that I half thought I wouldn’t be back before snow closed the mountains, and left me trapped in Hattusa. I came back so quickly that I doubt word of the battle will have beaten me here.”

  He paused, no doubt waiting to be asked what had happened when the Hittite army finally brought the Assyrians to battle. Hector did love his tales of war. On another occasion Priam would have been happy to let the court listen while Hector reminded them of his prowess in combat. He’d have enjoyed hearing the story himself, in truth, but not this time.

  “Who,” he asked, sitting a little straighter in the throne on the shallow dais, “is that?”

  Hector didn’t bother to turn around. “That is Mursili, Father. A Hittite, from the Royal Workshops.”

  Priam could see he was a Hittite. It was that which had caused his surprise, but to hear the man was an artisan as well… “The Hittites have taken to sending their craftsmen to Troy?”

  “The king permitted me to bring this one,” Hector said. “As thanks for my part in the battle at Emar. He’s an ironsmith, Father.”

  An ironsmith. The brown little man only stood with his head down, not offering the obeisance but respectful in his bearing despite that. Priam stared at him and thought rapidly.

  This explained a good deal, and raised other questions at the same time. Hector must have fought like a dozen demons in the service of the Hittite king to be allowed to bring a worker of that marvellous new metal to a western city. Without knowing any details, Priam knew his son must have gained real glory in the east. But even so, the Hittites guarded their ironsmiths jealously; for years, it was only in Hattusa that iron could be worked at all. Nobody else knew how, and the Hittites had lamed their experts so they couldn’t flee.

  The secret had leaked out, back when Priam’s father Laomedon had been a young boy. But it was still devilishly hard to mine iron and then smelt it, and Troy had never been able to do so for itself. Iron came through the city from time to time, carried on galleys or loaded onto wagons, but that was all, and it was how Hattusa wanted it. The Great King would tolerate an ironsmith in Babylon, and another in Ashkelon if the rumours were true, but nothing else. Troy itself was nominally a tribute city, under Hittite protection and sworn to send help in various wars, and the empire definitely did not want its half-subject, half-allies to grow strong enough to become rivals.

  As thanks for my part in the battle, Hector had said. That meant he had asked for an ironsmith and his request had been granted. Urhi-Tešub must be weaker than any king in Hattusa had been for a century. Priam studied his son and received a faint nod, a signal that there was more to the story than had been said. Well, that was wise. The rest could be spoken later, with fewer ears to listen. He looked significantly at his wife.

  “Hector,” she said. Hecuba rose and went down the single step to the floor, the hem of her gown trailing on the tiles as she walked. “It wouldn’t stain your manhood to kiss your mother, would it?”

  He grinned and bent to brush lips against her cheek. “I’d hug you, but I think I ought to bathe first.”

  “You should,” a very tall man said, from the left of the dais. “You reek like an unwashed stable hand.”

  “Laocoon!” Hector exclaimed. He strode across to clasp the taller man’s forearm. “How are the gods treating you?”

  Laocoon smoothed the front of his white
robe. “Athena smiles on me, as always. I knew you would be home today.”

  “A prophecy?”

  “Auspices only,” Laocoon said with a slight smile, “but I’ve learned to interpret them well.”

  “You should, at your age.”

  “Pup,” the priest said, laughing with the rest of the room. “Put on a white robe, and I’ll take you into the sanctuary and see if you take to the paths of wisdom as readily as you take to those of war.”

  “The temples already have one of my children,” Priam said. “Please don’t try to seduce my heir.”

  The laughter became uneasy, then dwindled. Everyone knew that Cassandra had been given in service to the priesthood because she wasn’t good for anything else. She became hysterical when she was touched, even by her siblings, or her mother. Priam’s was the only hand that didn’t frighten her. That made it impossible to arrange a marriage for her, or use her as an ambassador to foreign kings. A bride of Ipirru was all she could be, and even if she wasn’t a very good priestess, what else was there for her?

  Thinking of marriage made Priam glance at his wife again, and he nodded towards Hector in silent suggestion. Tell him.

  “I have found you a wife,” the queen said.

  Her son raised his eyebrows. “Without consulting me?”

  Hecuba made a dismissive gesture. “We’ve talked about it enough, in the past. Frankly you should have been married four years ago at least. You’re twenty-six, Hector. Do you know how many princes are still unwed at that age?”

  “Quite a lot are, in Hattusa,” Hector said. He wasn’t smiling, and the room was still silent. “I told you who I wanted to marry.”

  “Andromache,” she said promptly, “from Thebe-under-Plakos. And I told you why it was difficult. Eetion is a good king, and a loyal friend to Troy. But Thebe is not a major city. There are greater powers to consider in the world than a small town south of Mount Ida.”

  Hector nodded. “I realise that.”

  “Then you understand.”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “Who did you choose for my bride, Mother?”

  “Andromache of Thebe-under-Plakos,” she answered, and smiled. “Whatever the realities of the world, I do try to fight for my children, you know.”

  Hector laughed aloud, and the room laughed with the relief from tension. The prince strode to his mother and lifted her off the floor, her dress swirling as he spun and kissed her on both cheeks. When he set her down her braided hair was awry, and Priam noted with amusement that a flush had coloured her skin. It wasn’t often that Hecuba was put out of countenance, but she was now.

  “Are none of my brothers here for this news?” Hector asked. “Or my sisters? None of them came to greet me?”

  “Cassandra rarely leaves her temple, and Troilus is with his horses,” Priam said. “You know how he is; he forgets everything else as soon as he reaches the stables. Paris was supposed to be here though.”

  Everyone in the room knew what that meant: Paris was off with another of his young women, one more body to tease and arouse, and then discard. That was one prince who would find it very hard when he was married, and couldn’t please himself where women were concerned.

  “So no one came?” Hector asked, and deep slow voice or no, he sounded crestfallen.

  “I did,” someone said languidly, from the back of the crowd. The throng of nobles parted to reveal a man leaning against the tiled wall, arms folded across his chest. Hector let out a shout of delight. “Aeneas! Why didn’t you speak before, you dog?”

  “I thought I’d better wait,” the other man said. He was almost of a height with Hector, though slimmer in build. “You Trojans can be dreadfully sensitive when outsiders speak uninvited.”

  “You’re not an outsider. You married my sister.”

  “Speaking of whom…” Aeneas said.

  Hector followed his friend’s eyes, then laughed again as a woman stepped from behind a pillar. “Creusa! You look wonderful, sister. I swear, you grow lovelier every season.”

  “Flatterer,” she said, and then screamed in pretend terror as Hector seized her too and spun her around, just as he had his mother. “Put me down! You know I get dizzy when you do that!”

  Creusa was hardly lovely. Priam only had two daughters, and when one was a delicate reed who flinched at sudden sounds and hated to be touched, it meant the other was doubly important. Creusa had always been destined to wed a prince from one of Troy’s ally cities. The trouble was that she was simply plain, with a broad farmer’s face and long nose, and hair that straggled no matter what lotions were used to wash it. She was kind and loyal, but what prince valued those assets above beauty?

  Aeneas had. Two years ago he’d come to Hecuba to ask for Creusa as his wife, a request like lightning from a clear sky. Everyone had been taken completely by surprise, nobody more than Creusa herself, who for days had refused to believe it. Handsome Aeneas, one of only two men who could match spears with Hector and not be stomped flat in moments? Asking for her hand? It was too unlikely to be believed. Priam had struggled to believe it himself, in honesty, and Hecuba had accepted Aeneas’ offer with almost unseemly haste.

  Aeneas had called her the best of all Trojan women, and when she stood at the altar to speak her vows, Creusa had been as beautiful as any too. Priam held that memory dear, a touchstone in difficult times.

  “I hope your judgement is accurate,” he murmured to his wife. “That Thebe is the right city to bind to us now.”

  Hecuba sniffed. “Your siblings all died before they could marry, husband, in battle or in sickbeds. I brought you a link to Lydia, when we wed, but every city in Troas and many beyond have been too long without that connection. Whatever I chose for Hector, someone would be disappointed.”

  “Let us hope,” he said, “that it doesn’t go further than disappointment.”

  “Tend your own affairs,” she said. Her tone was still warm, so he knew she wasn’t really warning him, but the words were still blunt. “You administer the city and look to our defences, and let me worry about marriages and the temples. I haven’t done so badly, before.”

  “No,” he agreed, smiling a little. “No, you haven’t.”

  She had done wonderfully, in fact. Aeneas had helped, with his startling wish to marry Creusa, but that was only part of it. Hecuba had seen Cassandra taken in by the sanctuaries, when no temple had really wanted to accept such a timid creature. She’d used Lycaon’s love of travel to turn him into an ambassador for Troy overseas; he was in Cyprus now, dickering over lower prices for copper from the great mines there. The lad was also married to Eshan, a minor princess from the Hittite court, and minor or not that was a considerable diplomatic coup. Very few Hittite noble women married outside their own people. Priam couldn’t remember the last time one had wed a lord from the coastal cities.

  Now Hector was to marry Andromache, strengthening Troy’s links with Thebe-under-Plakos again. It had been too long, as Hecuba said. That it fulfilled Hector’s own wish at the same time was an added benefit. His marriage would leave only Troilus, who would make a good husband if he could stop thinking about horses for three minutes at a time, and Paris. Troilus ought to be easily dealt with. Find him a wife who didn’t mind that he came home late and smelling of horse, and they would both be happy.

  Paris, Priam and Hecuba’s youngest, much-loved child, was probably going to be a problem. The silence in the room a moment ago was proof of that: everyone knew what he was like. Show him a pretty girl and all sense left him. Show him another and he forgot the first to go bounding after the new conquest. Some men were fools for money, others for power or glory, but it was saddest of all to see a man be a fool for lust.

  Hecuba was wrong about one thing, though: not all Priam’s siblings had died. One still lived, though in captivity far away. And it was lust that had led Telamon to steal Hesione, twenty years ago now.

  Priam still hated to think of that. His sister had lived half her life in a foreign land, held priso
ner by a pirate and raider who used her as he chose. She’d borne him a son, soon after her capture, though no children since. Priam thought that meant she’d found a way to defy him, at least in that one thing. To keep a small part of herself from him.

  She had used to bring him flowers, when she was very small and he was learning the spear. He still remembered her toddling in the mud of the training yard, an anemone held in her tiny hand.

  Antenor was in Greece again, trying to secure the return of Hesione. He hoped to gain the trust of other Argive lords, who would in turn persuade Telamon to hand her back. Priam didn’t hold out much hope. Too many efforts had been rebuffed, and the Greeks had never changed their position by one inch. It was Telamon’s choice to make, they said, and if he refused that was an end to the matter.

  There would not be an end while Hesione lived. Priam would keep trying, and Hector after him would try. And if the Argives still refused, then Troy had other weapons it could use.

  “People are noticing,” Hecuba murmured to him.

  He came to himself again, a smile forming on his lips without the need for him to think. He didn’t need to ask what his wife meant. The courtiers and lords gathered in the throne room had become aware that Priam’s thoughts were elsewhere, and the talk had quieted as they waited to learn why. Even Aeneas was looking, just from the side of his eye, but then he often did that. A clever lad, the Dardanian. He’d be a good support for Hector when he was king.

  Priam stood and went down the step to the megaron floor to rejoin his son, and the conversation picked up around them once more.