by Dan Simmons
I’ll kill any man who says that about the son of Peleus. He would never abandon us of his own free will. We all saw and heard the goddess Athena tell Achilles that he had been enchanted by Aphrodite’s spell.
EUMELUS
Enchanted by Amazon pussy, you mean.
(Menesthius steps toward Eumelus and begins to draw his sword.)
NESTOR
(Stepping between them.)
Enough! Aren’t the Trojans killing us quickly enough, or do we need to add to our own slaughter? Eumelus, step back! Menesthius, sheath your sword!
PODALIRIUS
(Speaking as the Achaean’s last healer now, not as Agamemnon’s personal doctor.)
What’s killing us is the disease. Another two hundred dead, especially among the Epeans who are defending the riverbank to the south.
POLYXINUS
(Son of Agasthenes, co-commander of the Epeans.)
This is true, Lord Nestor. At least two hundred dead and another thousand too sick to fight.
DRESEUS
(Captain of the Epeans, just raised to the rank of commander.)
Half my men did not respond to muster this morning, Lord Nestor.
PODALIRIUS
And it’s spreading.
AMPHION
(Another recently promoted captain of the Epeans.)
It’s Phoebus Apollo’s Silver Bow striking us down, just as it was ten months ago when the god-spread disease had corpse fires burning every night. It’s what led to the first falling-out between Achilles and Agamemnon—it’s what led to all our woes.
PODALIRIUS
Oh, fuck Phoebus Apollo and his Silver Bow. The gods—including Zeus—did their worst to us and now they’re gone, and only they know if they’re coming back. Personally, I don’t care if they do or don’t. These deaths, this disease, didn’t come from Apollo’s Silver Bow—I think it comes from the foul water the men are drinking. We’re drinking our own piss and sitting in our own excrement here. My father, Asclepius, had this theory of origins of disease in contaminated water and…
NESTOR
Learned Podalirius, we will rejoice to hear your father’s theory of disease at another time. Right now I need to know if we can hold off the Trojans today and what, if anything, my captains advise us to do.
ECHEPOLUS
(Son of Anchises)
We should surrender.
THRASYMEDES
(Nestor’s son who had fought so valiantly the day before. His wounds are bandaged and bound up, but he appears to be suffering from them more today than in the heat of yesterday’s long fight.)
Surrender, my ass! Who is in our circle of Argives that so cowers from fear that he suggests craven surrender? Surrender to me, son of Anchises, and I’ll put you out of your misery as quickly as the Trojans certainly will.
ECHEPOLUS
Hector is an honorable man. King Priam used to be an honorable man, and may well still be. I traveled with Odysseus to Troy when the Ithacan came to reason with Priam, to try to get Helen back through talk to avoid this war, and both Priam and Hector were reasonable, honorable men. Hector will hear our surrender.
THRASYMEDES
That was eleven years and a hundred thousand souls sent down to Hades ago, you fool. You saw the extent of Hector’s mercy when Ajax the Great begged and pleaded for his life, his long shield hammered into tin, snot and tears rolling down our hero’s face. Hector severed his spine and hacked out his heart. His men probably won’t be so merciful to you.
NESTOR
I know there has been talk of surrender. But Thrasymedes is correct—too much blood has been spilled on this Trojan soil to hold out any hope for mercy. We would have given the citizens of Ilium none, would we, had we but breached their walls to more success three weeks ago—or ten years ago? All of you here know that we would have killed every man old enough or young enough to lift a sword or bow, slaughtered their old men for spawning our enemies, raped their women, carried all their surviving women and children into a life of slavery, and put the torch to their city and their temples. But the gods…or the Fates…whoever is deciding the outcome of this war, have turned against us. We cannot expect from the Trojans, who suffered our invasion and our ten years of siege, more mercy than we would have granted them. No, tell your men, if you hear these murmurings, that it is madness to surrender. Better to die on your feet than on your knees.
IDOMENEUS
Better to not die at all. Is there no plan to save ourselves?
ALASTOR
(Teucer’s commander)
The ships are burned. The food is running out, but we will all be dead of thirst before we starve. Disease claims more every hour.
MENESTHIUS
My Myrmidons want to break out—fight our way through the Trojan lines and make for the south—to Mount Ida and the heavy forests there.
NESTOR
(nodding)
Your Myrmidons are not the only ones thinking about breaking out and escaping, brave Menesthius. But your Myrmidons cannot do it alone. None of our tribes or groups can. The Trojan lines stretch back for miles and their allies’ lines go deeper. They expect us to try to break out. They’re probably wondering why we haven’t tried it before this. You know the iron laws of combat with sword, shield, and spear, Menesthius—all Myrmidons and Achaeans know it—for every man who falls in shield-to-shield combat, a hundred are slaughtered while fleeing. We have no working chariots left—Hector’s chiefs have hundreds. They’ll run us down and slaughter us like sheep before we cross the dried bed of the River Scamander.
DRESEUS
So we stay? And die here today or tomorrow on the beach next to the charred timbers of our great black ships?
ANTILOCHUS
(Nestor’s other son)
No. Surrender is out of the question for any man here with balls, and defense of this position will be untenable in a few hours—it may be untenable during the next attack—but I say we all try to break out at the same time. We have thirty thousand fighting men left—more than twenty thousand well enough to fight and run. Four out of five of us may fall, verily—be slaughtered like sheep before we reach the concealing forests of Mount Ida—but at those odds, four or five thousand of us will survive. Half that number may even survive the searches of the forest for us which the Trojans and their allies will carry out, like royalty pursuing a stag, and half that remaining number may find their way off this goddamned continent and cross the wine-dark seas to home. Those odds are good enough for me.
THRASYMEDES
And for me.
TEUCER
Any odds are better than the certainty of our bones bleaching on this fucking goddamned motherfucking shit-eating piss-drinking beach.
NESTOR
Was that a vote for breaking out, son of Telemon?
TEUCER
You’re fucking goddamned right it was, Lord Nestor.
NESTOR
Noble Epeus, you’ve had no voice in this council yet. What do you think?
EPEUS
(Shuffling his feet and looking down in embarrassment. Epeus is the best boxer of all the Achaeans, and his face and shaved head show his years at the sport—cauliflower ears, a flattened nose, permanant scar tissue on his cheeks and brow ridges, countless scars even on his scalp. I cannot fail to see the irony in Epeus’ position in this council and my own effect on his life and fate. Never famed for his battle prowess, Epeus would have won the boxing matches in Patroclus’ funeral games—held by Achilles—and been the master builder of the Odysseus-conceived wooden horse if I had not begun screwing up the Homeric version of this story almost a year ago. As it stands now, Epeus is in the council of chieftains only because all his commanding officers—up to Menelaus—have been killed.)
Lord Nestor, when one’s opponent is most confident, when he crosses the fighting space toward you with certainty in his heart that you are down for the count, unable to rise, that is the best time to strike him hard. In this case, strike him hard,
stun him, knock him back on his heels, and run for our lives. I was at the Games once when a boxer did just that.
(Laughter all around at this.)
EPEUS
But it will have to be at night.
NESTOR
I agree. The Trojans see too far and ride their chariots too quickly for us to have a fighting chance in the daylight.
MERIONES
(Son of Molus, close comrade of Idomeneus, second in command of the Cretans.)
We won’t have a much better chance in the moonlight. The moon is three-quarters full.
LAERCES
(A Myrmidon, son of Haeman)
But the winter sun sets earlier and the moon rises later this week. We will have almost three hours from the beginning of real darkness—the kind of darkness where you need a torch to find your way—and the rising of the moon.
NESTOR
The question is, can we hold through the hours of daylight today and will our men have enough energy left in them to fight—we’ll have to concentrate our attack and hit hard to forge a hole in the Trojan lines—and enough energy left then to run the twenty miles and more to the forests of Mount Ida?
IDOMENEUS
They’ll have the energy to fight today if they know they might have a chance to live tonight. I say we hit the Trojans right in the center of their lines—right where Hector leads—since he’s concentrated his strength on both flanks for today’s fighting. I say we break out tonight.
NESTOR
The rest of you? I need to hear from everyone here. It’s truly all or nothing, everyone or no one in this attempt.
PODALIRIUS
We’ll have to leave our sick and wounded behind, and there will be thousands more of these by nightfall. The Trojans will slaughter them. Perhaps do worse than mere slaughter in their frustration if any of us gets away.
NESTOR
Yes. But such are the vagaries of war and fate. I need to hear your votes, Noble Chiefs of the Achaeans.
THRASYMEDES
Aye. We go for it all tonight. And may the gods watch over those left behind and those captured later.
TEUCER
Fuck the gods up the ass. I say yes, if our fate is to die here on this stinking beach, I say we defy the Fates. Go tonight at fall of true dark.
POLYXINUS
Yes.
ALASTOR
Yes. Tonight.
LITTLE AJAX
Aye.
EUMELUS
Yes. All or nothing.
MENESTHIUS
If my lord Achilles were here, he’d go for Hector’s throat. Maybe we can get lucky and kill the son of a bitch on our way out.
NESTOR
Another vote for breaking out. Echepolus?
ECHEPOLUS
I think we’ll all die if we stay and fight another day. I think we’ll all die if we try to escape. I for one choose to stay with the wounded and offer my surrender to Hector, trusting in the hope that some shards of his former honor and sense of mercy have survived. But I will tell my men that they can make up their own minds.
NESTOR
No, Echepolus. Most of the men will follow their commander’s lead. You can stay behind and surrender, but I’m relieving you of your command and appointing Amphion in your place. You can go straight from this meeting to the tent where the wounded wait, but speak to no one. Your brigade is small enough and it is on Amphion’s left on the line…the two can merge with no confusion or need to reposition troops. That is, I am promoting Amphion if Amphion votes to fight our way out tonight.
AMPHION
I so vote.
DRESEUS
I vote for my Epeans—we fight and die tonight, or fight and escape. I for one want to see my home and family again.
EUMELUS
Agamemnon’s men told us, and the moravec things confirmed it, that our cities and homes were empty, our kingdoms now unpopulated—our people stolen away by Zeus.
DRESEUS
To which I say fuck Agamemnon, fuck the moravec toys, and fuck Zeus. I plan to go home to see if my family is waiting. I believe they are.
POLYPOETES
(Another son of Agasthenes, co-commander of the Lapiths from Argissa)
My men will hold the line today and lead the fight out tonight. I swear this by all the gods.
TEUCER
Couldn’t you swear by something a little more constant? Like your bowels?
(Laughter around the circle)
NESTOR
It’s agreed, then, and I concur. We’ll do everything in our power to hold back the Trojan onslaught today. To that end, Podalirius, oversee the serving out of all rations this morning except for what a man can carry in his tunic tonight. And double the morning’s water rations. Go through Agamemnon’s and dead
Menelaus’ private stores, pull out anything edible. Commanders, tell your men before this morning’s battle that all they have to do today is hold—hold for their lives, die only for their comrades’ lives—and we will attack tonight at true dark. Some of us will reach the forest and—Fates willing—our homes and families again. Or, failing that, our names will be written in gold words of glory that will last forever. Our children’s grandchildren’s grandchildren will visit our burial mounds here in this accursed land and say—“Aye, they were men in those days.” So tell your sergeants and their men to breakfast well this morning, for most of us will eat dinner in the Halls of the Dead. So tonight, when it’s true dark and before the moon arises, I will authorize our favorite pugilist—Epeus—to ride up and down our lines, shouting Ápete—just as they do to start the chariot races and footraces at the Games. And then we’ll be off to our freedom!
(And that should have been the end of the meeting—and a rousing end it was, for Nestor is a born leader and knows how to wrap up a meeting with action items and energy, something my department chair at Indiana University never understood—but, as always, someone breaks the perfect rhythm of the perfect script. In this case, that someone is Teucer.)
TEUCER
Epeus, noble boxer, you never told us the end of your story. Whatever happened to that Olympics boxer who stunned his opponent and then ran out of the arena?
EPEUS
(Who as everyone knows is more honest than wise)
Oh, him. The Olympics priests hunted him down in the woods and killed him like a dog.
The Achaean chieftains have dispersed, gone back to their lines and their men. Nestor has left with his sons. The healer Podalirius has put together a detail of men to sack Agamemnon’s tent in a search for food and wine. I’m left alone here on the beach—or at least as alone as one can be when pressed cheek to jowl with thirty thousand other unwashed men all reeking of sweat and fear.
I touch the QT medallion under my tunic. Nestor did not ask for my vote. None of the Achaean heroes so much as looked at me during that entire debate. They know I don’t fight and they seem to like me no less for it—it’s the way these ancient Greeks treat men who like to dress up in women’s clothing and paint their faces white. There is no dishonor there in most of these men’s eyes, only dismissal. I’m a freak to them, an outsider, something less than a man.
I know I’m not going to stay until the bitter end. I doubt if I’ll stay during today’s battle since the air here will grow dark with volleys of arrows in the next half hour. I don’t have the morphing gear and impact armor that I had as a scholic—I haven’t even donned the metal or leather armor that’s so available from Achaean corpses all around me. If I stay, I doubt I’d last the day—the last two days have been a series of craven hours and timid cowering for me here, near the back of the line, near the tent where the wounded are dying. If I were to survive the day, my chances of surviving the attack on the Trojans after dark would be near zero.
And why would I stay? I have a quantum teleportation device hanging around my neck, for Christ’s sake. I could be in Helen’s chambers in two seconds, relaxing in a hot bath there in five minutes.
Why would I s
tay?
But I’m not ready to go. Not quite yet. I’m no longer a scholic and there may be no purpose to being a scholar here, but even as a war correspondent who will never be able to report his observations, this last glorious day of a lost glorious epoch is too interesting to miss.
I’ll stay for a while.
The horns are blowing everywhere. No one’s had time for those promised big breakfasts yet, but the Trojans are attacking all along the line.
64
To know that everything in the universe—everything in history, everything in science, everything in poetry and art and music, every person, place, thing, and idea—is connected, that is one thing. To experience that connection, even incompletely, that is quite another.
Harman was unconscious for most of nine days. When he wasn’t unconscious, he was awake only briefly and then screaming in pain from a headache beyond all capacity of his skull and brain to contain it. He threw up a lot. Then he would lapse into coma again.
On the ninth day he awoke. The headache rolled over him, worse than any headache he had ever experienced, but no longer the scream-maker of his nine-day nightmare. The nausea was gone and his stomach was empty. He’d later realize that he’d lost more than twenty-five pounds. He was naked and lying in the bed on the second floor of the eiffelbahn cablecar.
The cablecar is designed and decorated mostly in art noveau, he thought as he staggered out of bed and pulled on a silk dressing gown that had been thrown over the arm of the overstuffed Empire-era armchair next to the bed. He wondered idly where in the world anyone was raising worms to make silk—had it been one of the servitors’ duties these long centuries of human idleness? Was it being artificially created in some industrial vat somewhere, the way the post-humans had created—recreated, actually—his race of nano-altered human stock? Harman’s head hurt too much to ponder the thought now.
He paused on the mezzanine, closed his eyes, and concentrated. Nothing. He remained in the cablecar. He tried again. Nothing.
Staggering slightly, dizzy now, he went down the wrought-iron metal staircase to the first floor and collapsed into the only chair at the table near the window. The table was covered with white linen.