Troy: A Brand of Fire

by Ben Blake

  *

  Quarter of an hour of walking brought them to the far side of Linaria, and a forest that marched right up to the last line of houses and overhung them, keeping them in shade. A path led away between the trunks. Patroclus started down it, motioning for Odysseus to follow.

  Achilles refuses to meet me in the town, then. I’ve crossed half the Aegean to be here and he won’t leave the groves. The Myrmidon was making it clear that he was in control here, something that happened to Odysseus quite often. The king of a small country had to swallow insults more often than most, and he gave no sign that it irritated him.

  Another few minutes, climbing at first and then on smoother ground, and they came to a clearing with a temple in the middle, pillared on all four sides with white marble. A row of smaller buildings ran halfway around the edge of the glade: sleeping quarters, probably, though in Dionysian festival times precious little sleeping would be done in them. Men lay on the grass all around, some resting, others talking quietly among themselves. One group was playing draughts, taking turns to replace the beaten man. All of them carried the hard look of warriors, Myrmidons taking their ease between battles.

  Achilles himself was sitting with his back against a pillar at the top of the steps, eyes closed against the sunshine that beat on the lids. At his side rested a golden battle helmet with a snow-white crest. He couldn’t think to meet enemies here, in the playground of the Myrmidons, so he must carry it for show. Whether he did so normally, or had brought it just to emphasise his nature to his visitor, there was no way to tell.

  Odysseus had spoken to him only once before, briefly, at a gathering of kings and merchants on Salamis two summers before. He remembered being struck by the sheer presence of the man, his ability to dominate a room while seated and silent, apparently unengaged. Odysseus had heard stories of other meetings, other men, who had said the wrong thing and been beaten for it. Or killed. Achilles was not a man to relax with.

  “Ithacan,” the big man said, when Odysseus and Patroclus were still yards from the bottom of the steps. He hadn’t bothered to open his eyes. “Welcome. Seat yourself.”

  Some of the men glanced around, then went back to their idle chatter or their game. Patroclus lifted a hand to Achilles and turned away without a word, leaving Odysseus to climb the stairs alone. Either the two men had a deep understanding that required no words, or else Achilles played his dominance games even with his own men. Perhaps especially with them.

  “Will you join me?” Achilles asked. Now he did open his eyes. He produced a jug of wine and two pottery cups, and poured without waiting for a reply. “It’s already watered. I don’t like strong wine early in the day.”

  Odysseus accepted with a murmur of thanks. The wine was sweet, tasting of the pine resin used to preserve it.

  “So,” Achilles said. “Agamemnon has decided he needs me for his war against Troy, has he?”

  “If there is a war,” Odysseus said. “He’s gone to Delphi with some of the other kings, to seek advice from the Pythia. But yes, he knows he’ll need the Myrmidons behind him.”

  Achilles’ green eyes flashed. “Never that! Beside him, perhaps, but not behind. We don’t serve him.”

  “All Greeks serve the High King.”

  “Not the Myrmidons,” Achilles said sullenly.

  Pride had always been the largest thing about Achilles. It might have been so anyway – perhaps it was born in him – but Odysseus thought it came from when he’d first been told the prophecy spoken in Thessaly, on the day of that boar hunt long ago. There will be glory and sorrow unmeasured by mortals, and amidst it shall be the son of the man who slew the boar, a warrior ten times greater than his father. Peleus had gone further; a warrior to outshine us all, he’d said. Once Achilles knew that, he was always going to see himself as the centre of the world, and only a small step below the gods.

  Odysseus wondered what would happen when Peleus died. The king of Thessaly had been a notable warrior himself in his day, and would be still if it weren’t for his expanding girth. Achilles was a greater fighting man, beyond doubt, and unlike Diomedes he defined himself by that. When he became king of Thessaly he might consider raiding with the Myrmidons more important than ruling his land; more important too than accepting the authority of the High King.

  Still, that was a problem for another day, and not something Odysseus would have to deal with anyway. He’d long since given up trying to cure all the ills of the world. All he wanted now was to solve the problem in front of him.

  “What will you do, then?” he asked casually. “Will the Myrmidons stand aside from this war at Troy?”

  “Why shouldn’t we?”

  “Because Greece needs you,” Odysseus said. “These past twenty years, even before you were old enough to fight, the Myrmidons have been raiding around the Greensea. Nobody else has, at least not regularly. Not since Theseus killed Minos and Crete fell.”

  Achilles shrugged. “We’re the best at it.”

  “I know you are. So do all the Greeks. Knowing you and the Myrmidons are with us will give them a huge amount of belief. And it will sow doubt in Trojan minds, as well. Nestor says there was a family in Priam’s palace from the Mysian town you sacked. They know what the Myrmidons can do.”

  “So they should,” Achilles said, with more than a dash of pride. “There isn’t a town on the shores of the Greensea that we couldn’t take.”

  “So prove that,” Odysseus said. “Take Troy.”

  Achilles fiddled with his wine cup. “Troy is… different. They have a standing army there, men trained just as well as the Myrmidons are. And they have their walls. If half what I hear about those are true, I wonder if any force in the world could breach them.”

  He did understand warfare, Odysseus had to admit. Almost everything else was a mystery to Achilles, but he knew war. “The walls are everything you’ve heard. Vast, and built on top of a ridge.”

  “Then Troy can’t be taken,” Achilles said.

  “Everywhere can be taken. And you just said the Myrmidons can raze any town on the Greensea.”

  There was a pause, and then Achilles said, “My mother doesn’t want me to join this war.”

  Odysseus had no reply to that. Mighty Achilles, unwilling to fight because his mother was afraid? It made no sense. He remembered Peleus had said it was Thetis who wrote the letter calling Achilles to the Gathering, but he hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. He didn’t know what to think of it now, but he sensed danger under his feet, an eruption of Achilles’ temper if the wrong words were spoken. So Odysseus didn’t speak at all, and waited to see what Achilles would say.

  “She has the gift of prophecy, sometimes. It comes from her time in the temple of Aphrodite, she says, on Sarakino. Before she met my father. She had a foretelling about this war.”

  Odysseus hid his scepticism. If wives and mothers could see the future there would be no reason to visit the Oracle at Delphi, or any other soothsayer. “Really?”

  Achilles was still playing with his wine cup. “She told me the war will last for years. Both sides will exhaust themselves as they struggle. And the greatest hero on each side will be slain, which of course means me. I will die.” There was no boasting, no fear in his voice. He was simply a man stating facts. “My mother fears I will fall, if I go to Troy.”

  “I fear I will fall, if I go,” Odysseus said. “I have an infant son at home, Achilles. We named him Telemachus. I want to spend the next two years teaching him to walk, not miss it all fighting a war I hardly care about on the other side of the sea. But I will go to Troy, if all the kings do. Some things must be done, or we abandon all honour.”

  “True,” Achilles admitted.

  “Then put your faith in the gods and go,” Odysseus suggested. “It’s what you do anyway, every time you go into battle. Make your offerings, purge your soul as best you can, and trust in your skill and the gods to bring you through alive. And think.” He leaned forward, catching Achilles’ emerald e
yes. “There’s not a warrior in Greece better than you. But who will men talk of, if you don’t go to Troy and Ajax does, and Diomedes? If they lead the charge that surges over the walls, when Troy is torn down. What will men say then?”

  Achilles jaw tightened. “They wouldn’t dare. Not when I’m close enough to hear them.”

  “No, not then. But behind your back. When you’re away. Men will say; Achilles could have been the greatest captain of them all, had he gone to Troy. But he stayed away, and Diomedes breached the walls while Ajax tore down the Topless Towers. They will say it forever.”

  It was said Achilles had killed men for speaking words he didn’t like. Odysseus watched him carefully and sent a quick, silent prayer up to the sky.

  “Damn you,” Achilles said, his voice harsh. “Damn you to Hades forever, Ithacan, and your slick tongue with you.”

  Odysseus sighed. “I’m sorry, my friend. But all I want is for you to agree to go to Mycenae and speak with Agamemnon. What you decide after that is up to you. I’ll have done my duty.”

  “All right,” the big man said. “I will go. But only to talk, mind. I make you no promises.”

  “I don’t ask for any,” Odysseus said. He was relieved, actually: he’d thought persuading Achilles would be harder than this. Sometimes it was a relief to be proved wrong. “Do you have any more of that wine?”