by P. C. Cast
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Keeping one arm around her, Hector kneed the stallion so that it sprang to the side, narrowly avoiding Achilles’ charge. With a fluid motion, the big horse spun while Hector grabbed a spear from the saddle quiver and hurled it at Achilles. Kat screamed, but with the berserker’s inhuman reflexes Achilles knocked the spear aside as if it had only been a toothpick.
“Hector! No!” Thinking frantically she pulled on the stranger’s arm. “Leave him. Let’s get back inside the city walls. ”
Hector glanced down at her, trying to maneuver the stallion to avoid Achilles’ next rush.
“You cannot have her!” the creature snarled.
“By the gods! It is you he’s after. ” His arm squeezed her protectively.
“Get me out of here Hector!” Kat yelled above the noise of battle.
“Trojans! To me! Protect your Princess!”
For a second Kat thought it would work and they would leave Achilles to roar impotently at the walls of Troy, giving her time to figure out what the hell to do next. Hector had begun backing the stallion from the clearing and a line of Trojan warriors was rushing to meet them. Then the creature that had been her lover gave a terrifying cry and hurled himself at Hector’s stallion. As Achilles flew past them his bloody sword tore down the horse’s flank. The stallion screamed, stumbled and lost his rear footing on the slick, bloody clay. Kat automatically threw herself forward, clutching the stallion’s wide neck. She felt Hector’s grip on her release at the same instant Achilles snagged his shoulder, ripping him from the saddle.
Then everything happened with blinding swiftness.
Hector regained his footing. He ran to the stallion, pulling his sword and shield free. His eyes met Kat’s. She saw his love for Polyxena there, and knew that he would do anything to keep his sister safe.
“Get inside the walls. I’ll hold him off for as long as I can. ” Hector raised his hand and brought it down on the horse’s rump, sending him galloping across Trojan lines.
Achilles followed the horse, roaring with fury. Hector ran, jumped and put himself directly in the berserker’s path, cutting him off from Katrina. The Trojan warriors encircled Kat and the wounded stallion, but she had an excellent view of the battlefield as they fought off the Myrmidons, now rallied by Odysseus, and began moving her toward the city gates. Her eyes were locked on Achilles and Hector, and she watched everything as if in slow motion. Hector fought bravely, but he wasn’t battling a human. The creature was utterly uncontrollable, but Hector stood his ground, until Achilles sliced through the muscles of his thighs, and even then the brave man fought from his knees, keeping the monster engaged as the massive gates groaned open enough for Kat, the stallion and Hector’s guard to slip within. As they closed Kat heard a wail of despair begin from atop the Trojan walls and she knew that Hector, Prince of Troy, was dead.
The soldiers took her directly to the king. Priam’s arms enfolded Kat, and she wept with him while he held her.
“A miracle from the gods… a miracle from the gods…” he kept repeating over and over. Finally he steadied himself and called for wine for both of them. Only then did Kat get a good look at him, and her heart squeezed. He was an older, shorter version of Hector—a handsome man with kind brown eyes and thick silver and black hair. With a little jolt Kat realized that his eyes weren’t familiar just because Hector had had them. They were familiar because since she’d been transported to the ancient world and plunked into this body, those same expressive brown eyes had been looking out from her face, too.
Priam collapsed into a high-backed wooden chair exquisitely carved with plunging stallions. His hands shook as he drank deeply of the offered wine. Feeling lightheaded, Kat sipped her own wine, and then handed the goblet back to a servant who had been crying silently but openly. She heard a choked noise, and more arms were suddenly around her. An older, elegant woman who was too thin and a delicate, beautiful twenty something cried while they embraced her. Overwhelmed, Kat could only stand there and wish this had all been different—that she’d managed to make things right.
“It is true. Hector is dead. Achilles has killed him. ”
Kat looked up with the women who had been holding her to see who had spoken. A slender man stood in the arched door to the spacious chamber. He was probably not much older than Polyxena, and he, too, had kind, expressive eyes. A blond woman stood behind him in the shadow of the doorway, her beauty undiminished by the tears that washed her cheeks. She stared with adoration at the young man who had just spoken. Kat thought she’d never seen anyone so gorgeous—she easily rivaled even Venus’s beauty. Paris and Helen—it has to be.
Then his awful words registered on the group and the woman who must be Priam’s wife, the mother of Hector and Paris and Polyxena, threw herself onto the floor at the king’s feet while she tore her hair and wailed. The other woman who had been embracing her didn’t make a sound, but crumpled to the floor, unconscious.
“Get Astyanax. Holding Hector’s son will help her survive this,” ordered the young man as he came into the room.
“Yes, Lord Paris. ” A crying servant hurried to do his bidding.
Paris rushed to the fallen woman, whose eyelids were beginning to flutter weakly. He lifted her and carried her to a chaise not far from Priam’s throne. Then Kat was in the young man’s arms. She hugged him hard and she could feel the tremors that went through his body. “You are alive… You are alive,” he whispered over and over, his warm breath mixing with the tears that dampened her hair.
Kat couldn’t do any more than nod. Her mind was in tumult. Her heart felt as if it was shattering over and over.
There was a sobbing gasp from behind them, and Paris released his sister reluctantly, moving back to the chaise. “Andromache, I’ve sent for your son,” Paris spoke softly to the reviving woman. “Astyanax is being brought to you. ” He touched her cheek and then he drew himself up and slowly, almost painfully, he turned to his father.
The king was stroking his wife’s hair. Her face was buried in his knees and her wails had become broken sobs. Priam’s face was absolutely expressionless.
“Father,” Paris said brokenly, wiping the back of his sleeve across his face. “He’s dead, Father. ”
The old monarch’s eyes rested briefly on his youngest son. His blank expression did not change, but he focused his gaze over Paris’s shoulder as if he was looking into the past.
“You should take your sister to her chamber. I cannot see you when I am mourning my son. ” Priam’s voice wasn’t cruel, but it, like his face, was devoid of expression, which made it all the more terrible.
Paris seemed to crumple in on himself. “Father, I am your son, too. ”
“Yes, that is something the gods will never let me forget,” Priam said. “Go now. Return to my presence only when I call for you. ” He paused, and then added, “Take your woman with you. ”
“Come, sister. ” Paris held out his hand for hers and, not knowing what else to do, Kat took it and let him lead her from Priam’s throne room. As they passed Helen, she fell into step on Paris’s other side. Kat saw that she kept her head bowed, as if she was trying to obscure her face with her shining hair.
They walked silently through a marble-floored hallway, past several lovely, airy rooms. It was as if despair walked with them. All around them sounds of women crying echoed in the magnificent palace. Finally they came to a silver-inlayed door and Paris stopped.
“I will send maidservants to see to you,” Paris said. His cheeks were still wet and his voice was rough with emotion. “I’m so glad they didn’t kill you, little Xena. ”
And as it had been for the brief time she’d been with Hector, she could tell that Paris had loved Polyxena, too. Impulsively she hugged him. “Thank you,” Kat whispered.
Paris clung to her. “It’s my fault,” he said brokenly. “I caused his death. I caused all of their deaths. ”
Kat pitied him
. He was really not much more than a teenager—he must only have been thirteen or fourteen when he’d taken Helen from the Greeks. These two kids had started a war that had gone on for almost a decade? It hadn’t taken meeting Agamemnon and his cronies for Kat to know what utter bullshit that was. She shook her head at the sad young man. “No, Paris, it’s gone way beyond being your fault. ”
“Come, love. Polyxena needs to bathe and rest. Come with me, sweetest one,” Helen coaxed in a voice like poured honey.
Still sobbing, Paris nodded and stumbled away mostly supported by Helen’s arm around his waist.
Kat entered the chamber untouched by its splendor and stood numbly while she waited for the maidservants to come to her. They were there in minutes, grim-faced women who treated her reverently, but who kept breaking into sobs. Kat let them bathe, anoint and dress her in a simple silk robe. They left her wine and food and then, amid whispers and sobs, seemed to melt away.
Feeling detached and unfocused, Kat walked across the room to a huge, arched open window. Gauzy gold curtains picked up what was obviously the light from a fading sun, and shimmered evening colors of rust and orange and yellow. Sounds of fighting men drifted with the warm breeze and Kat stepped out onto a balcony that perched above the front walls of Troy, commanding an amazing view of the battlefield. She didn’t let her eyes look at it, though, just like she didn’t let her ears acknowledge that the one voice she could hear above all the other cries and clashing of two armies was the one that had possessed her Achilles. Instead she gazed beyond everything to the distant, watery horizon and the sun that was dying into the sea. She stared at it until the tears that blurred her vision filled her eyes, spilled over and ran down her cheeks.
Then through grief and noise and confusion Kat heard another sound. Her mind picked it up as it washed over her like clear, cool water over smooth river stones. Something about it reached her, soothed her and brought her subconscious the answer before her thinking mind understood it.
There was a clanking followed by many click-click-clicks, and then a familiar groan she’d heard only once before, when she’d ridden Hector’s wounded stallion through the opening gates of Troy.
Kat stepped out to the edge of the balcony. Following the clicking noise, she looked down and to her immediate left. Built inside the thick walls was an indention, a niche large enough for a man to stand comfortably within, a single arrow-slitted window gave an abbreviated view of the battlefield. Beside the man was an enormous chain, the links of which were half the size of his body. Kat watched the links slither down in a hole at the man’s feet like a waterfall of iron. There was a system of large iron levers in front of the man. His hands were on the levers, which were all pushed in a downward direction.
“Close the gates!” On the platform outside the niche a warrior suddenly called an abrupt command and lowered a scarlet flag he had been holding over his head. The man in the niche immediately tripped all of the levers, pushing each of them up. The chain stopped its slithering motion.
Leaning farther out over her balcony Kat peered down at the front gates of Troy as more than two dozen warriors rushed to close the gates while archers held off the bedraggled looking Greek army. The gates had been opened far enough for all of the Trojan warriors to retreat within the city, so it took a considerable amount of time to get them closed, but finally, with another eerie groan, the city was sealed.
Kat’s gaze went back to the man in the niche. He and the soldier holding the flag saluted each other and then relaxed into a stance that resembled parade rest.
So it took a couple dozen men or so to close the gates of the city, but only one to pull down some levers and open them?
Kat’s body flushed hot and then utterly cold. Everything fell suddenly into place. She and Jacky had missed the entire point—in the myth it wasn’t about fitting the whole Greek army into a ridiculous, hollow horse, out of which they emerged and kicked Trojan ass. It was about getting inside the impenetrable, god-fashioned walls of Troy and opening the gates.
Kat stared at the levers and at the two men who guarded them. No way would they allow anyone to get close enough to them to trip the chain and open the gates. But a princess of Troy was not just anyone.
“I am the Trojan horse,” she whispered, and the words sent a terrible shiver through her body.
