“I know that face,” he said. “Gods...it’s the little queen. Aren’t you?”
The soldier who held her kneed her lightly in the back.
“The general asked you a question, wench. Answer him.”
Lia swallowed. “Briseis,” she whispered.
The old general boomed a laugh like thunder.
“Briseis...” he hissed like a snake. “Caught us a queen.”
“Can I keep her?” the soldier holding her asked.
“What would a shit like you do with a queen?” the general demanded. “Even a slave, she still outranks you.”
That got the other three soldiers to laughing.
“What we going to do with her, then?” another soldier asked.
The general seemed to puzzle that over, eyes narrowed, fingers stroking his ratty gray beard.
“I know,” he said at last. He turned and stood at the edge of the temple stairs. He put two fingers into his mouth and blew a piercing whistle, loud as the cry of a hunting horn.
Lia went still as a statue in the grip of her captor. But though her body was frozen with terror, her mind ran wild. She was no fool. She knew her fate had been decided. As queen, she could be valuable. If her soldiers had taken any high-ranking Athenian or Ithacan prisoners, she might be ransomed for them. She might be given to Agamemnon, their king. She might be executed, publicly, in front of the remaining citizens in order to quell any rebellion.
Hera, Lia prayed. I, too, am the wife of an unfaithful husband. Protect your child. Deliver me from harm. Whomever takes me into captivity, let him be better than this disgusting rabble. And let him be a better man than my dead husband. You know I am asking for little in that.
The general had called someone up to the temple, and he now approached. She sensed the change in the soldiers surrounding her. Their backs straightened. Their chins rose. Their faces hardened to stone. They weren’t standing at attention out of respect.
They were afraid.
A man stepped into the temple.
The general walked to his side. The man was tall, taller than any of the other soldiers, including the general. Broader in the chest, too, with powerful arms and a king’s bearing. He wore magnificent armor—a bronze breastplate with an owl engraved on the gleaming metal and a bronze helmet with violet plumes.
As they approached, Lia composed herself. She sensed that this man, far more than the general, held her fate in his hands.
“Here she is,” the general said as they came to her.
Lia raised her face to the new soldier. He took off his helmet and stepped forward.
She met August’s gray eyes. She searched his face and saw August’s strong jaw, his nose, his olive skin—but his hair was short, a soldier’s haircut. In this world he was Achilles, not August, and though she knew him, he did not seem to know her.
Lia felt true fear.
“Achilles,” the general said. “Thought you’d like to meet one of the widows you made today. Briseis, meet Achilles, the man who killed your lord and husband.”
The five soldiers laughed. Achilles did not laugh. And when they saw he did not laugh, they stopped laughing.
“Your husband died honorably,” Achilles said. It was August’s voice, though with a new roughness to it.
“Are you sure it was my husband, then?” Lia, who had become Briseis, asked.
The five soldiers stared stupidly at her, not understanding the meaning of her question. But Achilles understood and, this time, he laughed.
She knew well of Achilles. They said he was the greatest warrior who ever lived. They said he was a favorite of the gods. They said he was immortal. They said he was merciless. They said he was loyal to no one but his own honor and his shield-bearer, Patroclus.
They said many things about the great Achilles.
They’d never said he was handsome.
Achilles looked at the general.
“She’s mine,” he said. Then, without another word, he grabbed her around the thighs and hoisted her over his shoulder. Lia went limp against his back, too terrified to scream or speak or fight. His steps were light and easy on the marble stairs leading down. Her weight on his shoulder didn’t slow him down one bit.
Achilles carried her for what felt like a mile before he put her on her feet by a stone hut at the edge of the city. He barked an order and an old woman in the worn wool garb of a laundress was brought forward.
“Sir?” the old woman asked.
“I want her washed and brought to my tent,” Achilles said.
“Yes, sir.”
Achilles walked off, and Lia faced the laundress.
The woman, though aged and stooped, was no fool. She tied a cord around Lia’s wrists and wound it around her waist and then around her ankles. Lia had to take short hobbling steps or she’d trip. With this humiliating mincing gait, she was escorted to a square wooden hut.
The woman opened a door with an iron latch and pushed Lia gently inside. She saw three women in the room, all busy at work—tending the fire in a large stone hearth or folding and rolling freshly washed and dried fabric. Words were quietly exchanged, instructions given and received.
The oldest woman, with white hair under a gray veil, came to Lia and looked her up and down. She was left standing, stupidly staring, while the trio untied the rope. Things happened so quickly after that, Lia had no chance to fight or run. She was led from the hut to a courtyard around the back, surrounded by high walls. The gray-haired washerwoman pushed her to stand in a sort of large wooden bucket or tub. Another woman pulled her bloodstained gown off her. Lia started to scream but the third woman immediately doused her with water, pouring it from a large clay pot over her head and shoulders. Before she could recover from the first dousing, she was doused a second time.
After, she was dried with a rough towel held in rough hands. A loose robe was thrown over Lia’s shoulders and she was taken back into the hut. The three women made her stand by the fire as they anointed her body with some sort of floral-scented oil, sparing no part of her. They were practiced in their work and it was done in seconds, it seemed. Then Lia’s wet hair was combed back, braided and laid over her right shoulder.
A gauzy linen dress, so sheer Lia could see her own nipples through the fabric, was pinned over her naked body—leaving her just as exposed as before. The three women looked her up and down and seemed to admire their quick handiwork. Lia wanted to vomit.
The eldest of the women tied Lia’s wrists together again, looped the rope around each ankle again to hobble her.
Another soldier waited for them outside the hut. Lia hadn’t seen him among the five soldiers who’d captured her. He looked to be in his late thirties, about ten years older than Achilles. He bowed his head to her when he approached. Bowed his head?
“You are Briseis?” His tone was respectful, measured.
“I am Queen Briseis, yes.”
His eyes gleamed as she claimed her title but he did not laugh at her, nor smile.
“I am Patroclus. I’ve come to escort you to the tent of Achilles. Are you ready?”
She took a step forward and nearly stumbled, forgetting she’d been hobbled with rope.
“May I?” Patroclus asked.
Thinking he meant to untie her she quickly answered, “Yes.”
But he didn’t untie her. He simply swept her up and into his arms to carry her through the soldiers’ camp.
They called out jokes and suggestions for what Patroclus should do to the girl in his arms until he shouted back, “She’s meant for Achilles.”
All were silent.
“Fools and heathens,” Patroclus said to her as they passed through an endless sea of round wooden huts and smaller leather tents. “If you serve Achilles well, he will do right by you and marry you when the war ends. He is noble to the sinew and bone.”
“It speaks much that his shield-bearer speaks so highly of him,” Lia said, amazed that, just like last time, the words she needed to say came to her so easily, like she had memorized a script.
“We are like brothers,” he said. “More so in some ways.”
As they passed one of the smaller stone huts, Lia was able to see inside through a gap in a curtain. A buxom young dark-haired woman lay on her back, naked, breasts bouncing, as an older man rutted on top of her, grunting. She panted under him, writhing.
Lia wanted to look away but couldn’t. The woman laughed with the man, and Lia prayed she was a camp prostitute and not a prisoner like herself. She found herself clinging harder to the neck of Patroclus.
“Forgive me,” he said. “Some sights are not fit for a young lady’s eyes.”
“I am no maid,” she told him. “And have you forgotten where you are taking me? And why?”
“I suppose I have,” he said, and laughed softly. He held her closer, like a father with a child. He, too, seemed noble, noble to the sinew, noble to the bone.
She caught herself staring at his profile, an elegant profile. Gray hair at the temples, a neatly trimmed brown-and-gray beard, and eyes just the same, brown with flecks of gray.
“We are nearly there,” he said.
“How do I please him?” she asked. “I have enemies enough in this camp. I wouldn’t like to make another.”
“You will please him,” he assured.
“How are you so certain, sir?”
“You please me,” he said. “And he and I share the same soul between us.”
“Do you share his tent?”
He paused, looked at her, smiled slightly. “I almost wish I did.”
They reached their destination, the tent nearest the battlefront. The position of greatest vulnerability in an army camp—it spoke of Achilles’s confidence that he’d chosen it. A man stood guard outside the largest of the soldiers’ tents. More a hut than a tent. The quarters of a wealthy soldier, indeed.
Patroclus opened the leather flap of the door, and carried her into the hut and set her gently onto her feet. Lia immediately collapsed onto the nearest pillow. She saw bronze shields and swords piled in a corner of the hut, a bow and quiver of arrows, boxes filled to overflowing with silver and gold coins, richly painted amphorae, and yards and yards of silk and other fine cloth. A fortune in war spoils.
Patroclus knelt in front of her and untied the rope from her wrists. He worked slowly when untying the rope from her ankles, and as he pulled them from her body, his fingertips brushed across the tops of her small bare feet. The touch was deliberate. She knew it. He knew it. She met his eyes; he met hers. Immediately he stood, putting distance between them.
“Do you require anything before I leave you? Food? Water? Wine?”
“No, thank you,” she said. “You have excellent manners for a soldier.”
“Soldier, yes,” he said. “Not savage.”
“My servant, a stooped and sickly woman of sixty years or more who tended me from my birth, had a sword put through her belly today. I buried her with a sprinkling of ashes from the fire grate.”
“I am sorry for her death, but it is good and right that wars are so vile,” he said. “Otherwise there would be more of them.”
“Strange words from a soldier.”
“I wish nothing more for the world than the time comes when it has no need for my services. I promise you, I can find better things to do with my days and nights than waging war.” He looked down at her. “Be well, my lady. I shall be just outside, standing guard.”
“Will you listen when he takes me?” she asked him.
“I will not listen,” he said. “But I might hear.”
“Then I hope he gives me pleasure,” she said, “so that you will enjoy what you hear.”
He stared at her, and she could not fathom the look in his eyes. It was a long look, long and longing. Then he turned and left her alone. Lia gathered the fabric of her gown around her as best she could and once more tried to make herself small and invisible.
She heard male voices outside the hut, softly talking. She strained her ears but couldn’t make out the words.
The door of the hut opened.
Achilles entered.
He’d removed his cuirass and now wore only the stripped leather pteruges of the hoplite and a loose tunic. His hair looked damp and he carried with him the scent of salt water. He’d bathed in the sea.
He glanced at her, sitting still and small on the red silk pillow. She’d had a pillow like this in the women’s quarters of the palace. Was this her pillow? The palace had been sacked. How much of the loot in the corner of his tent had been her husband’s? Her father’s? Hers?
“Were you touched by anyone?” he asked.
“The women who bathed me,” she said. “And Patroclus, who carried me here.”
“Did he take you?”
“No. He honors you. He...he touched my foot. That’s all.”
Achilles nodded, pleased.
“I fight all day,” he said. “I have no interest in fighting in my own tent.”
“I will not fight you, sir.”
“No,” he said. “You will not.”
Lia gazed at him as he pulled off his tunic and dropped it to the floor. He brought his fingers to a small leather tie at his hip, unknotted it and dropped his battle skirt to the floor, as well. He stepped toward her, naked but for the sheen of oil on his dark olive skin.
“Lie back,” he ordered, and she did as instructed. Lia’s heart pounded in her throat. She tried to tell herself this was a fantasy—that this man was August Bowman and she was Lia Godwick—but no matter what her mind said, her body knew this was very, very real. This was real, and she was Briseis, a slave of war, and it was Achilles who now owned her body.
On her back, she panted, nearly hyperventilating.
Achilles loomed over her. “Show me your cunt,” he said.
She knew disobedience would win her nothing but a quick death but that wasn’t the reason she obeyed. She lifted her sheer gown up to her stomach and spread her thighs wide. She gazed at the high white moon that shone through the small square in the roof of the hut where the smoke from the fire was meant to escape. She obeyed Achilles because this was nothing new for her. For three years, she’d been little more than a concubine to her husband, the king. She was well versed in the art of submitting to survive. What wife in this cruel era was not?
And at least Achilles had a face and form handsome enough not to repulse her.
He took his organ in his hand and stroked it as she slipped her hands between her open thighs and opened the folds of her body to him. With the moon so high and white, the room was bright enough she knew he could see all he wished to see. A slight smile spread across his lips. Not a cruel smile, however.
“Beautiful,” he said.
She said nothing. With her husband, she had learned silence was her salvation. He wanted her breasts and her holes—no part of her was spared—but a woman’s mouth was for taking cocks and not conversation, in his opinion. It was easy enough with her husband to will her mind far away. When he took her body, her mind ran free in verdant forests, playing hide-and-seek with nymphs and gentle-eyed does unafraid of the hands of wounded women. But though she tried again and again to cast her mind away to the sacred woods where she hid from men, it kept coming back to this moment of Achilles standing over her, staring down at her spread-open sex.
He knelt between her thighs, still stroking himself. She couldn’t help but glance at his organ, though she regretted it immediately. He was larger than her husband by far, the organ so thick his fingers could barely encompass it and his hand so much larger than hers. What did that mean for her body, she didn’t want to wonder.
“You don’t weep,” he said. “I wonder why that is.”<
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She still did not speak. Some men loved the sound of their own voices and found their words sweeter music than anything wrung from the harp or lyre. Best not to interrupt.
He took her by the hips and pulled her closer to him. He found the entrance to her body with two fingers and pushed into it all the way, to the knuckles of his hand. Lia flinched and whimpered but held her tongue.
“You’re very young,” he said. “And small. I am neither.”
He removed his fingers from inside her and put them in his mouth, wetting them before pushing them back into her. He pushed his thumb into her to join the first two fingers, and Lia had to spread her legs wider to take it. Achilles parted his fingers, prying her open from the inside. Lia gasped in pleasure and pain as he widened her opening, then pried her apart even more. A low grunt escaped her throat.
“Better like this,” he said, “than tear you apart with my cock.”
He pulled his hand out and wet his fingers again in his mouth. This time her body yielded more readily to the intrusion. His fingers moved inside her, probed and pushed until she was open enough for him.
The tips of two fingers found a knot inside her, a tender tensed muscle and kneaded it. Lia’s eyes rolled back in her head.
“Good,” Achilles said.
She tried to breathe as he went about preparing her for his cock. He rubbed along the front wall, rubbed along the back. When she made a certain sound, a tiny gasp or quick inhalation, he stopped, as if he could simply take no more.
“Enough,” she heard Achilles say to himself. Abruptly he pulled his fingers from her and replaced them with the tip of his organ. With his large hands, he gripped her by her waist, lifted her, and then with a stroke he impaled her.
On her bed of silk, so incongruous in this rough wood and leather hut, she lay still as Achilles rutted into her with long rough thrusts. She willed herself to not move, to let him take all while she gave nothing.
At first her strategy worked. The huge phallus splitting her demanded nothing of her but that she yield to it. And Achilles was careful to not let his full weight rest on her and crush her. He crouched over her, hands and elbows on either side of her head, knees holding her legs apart as he pumped into her. He exhaled in rough, ragged breaths that tickled her shoulder and neck.
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