A Song of War: a novel of Troy

by Kate Quinn

  Finally, she turned back to Helen. “Let me fight for you, Lady, daughter of Zeus.” If she served her family loyally, then the worst of her wrongs would be undone—or so Penthesilea prayed.

  Everyone in her tribe had told Penthesilea it wasn’t her fault. Even while her mother and father and her other sisters mourned, smearing ashes on their faces and eating black dirt from their trembling hands, still they insisted it was an accident, the kind of misfortune that could have befallen any warrior.

  But their insistence had been no comfort to Penthesilea. She couldn’t stop herself from reliving that terrible moment when, in the midst of their raid, she had flung her spear toward an enemy—and some unseen force, the wind or the whim of a cruel god—had taken the weapon on another course. Even when she rode out of her tribe’s encampment forever, her muscles and bones remembered again and again the feel of the throw, the shaft of her spear gliding confidently from her hand. And the cold that seized her heart when the throw went awry and her own spear buried itself in Hippolyte’s straight, proud back.

  The sound of Hippolyte’s dying scream had followed Penthesilea down the mountains and over the dry, hot plain. It seemed to hang even now in the rafters of Helen’s chamber. She could feel the scream vibrating with her pulse, hear it rushing in her ears.

  I killed my sister. It won’t matter to the gods that it was an accident. It doesn’t matter to me. I killed her, and if I do not restore my honor, then I will never see Hippolyte in the afterlife. I will never have the chance to beg her forgiveness.

  “Please, Lady.” Penthesilea hated to beg, but she would do what she must for the sake of honor. And service to her family was the last honor she could hope to claim. “Let me be your warrior.”

  Helen’s expectant silence stretched on. Penthesilea pressed her lips together to stop them from trembling and cast about for something more to say. But the small, freckled woman who stood beside the window, wrapped in her own misery, gave a sudden gasp, and Helen turned to regard her.

  “Andromache?”

  The other made no reply. Helen stood smoothly and glided to her side. She, too, looked out the window, then clicked her tongue in disgust. “So the black beetle is creeping through the garden today.”

  Penthesilea went to the window, too, though she had not been asked to join her cousin. Outside, the sun was hot on the well-groomed squares of faded flowers and bristling herbs, the paths of crushed white limestone that led from one half-dried patch to another. A figure moved out from behind a scraggly laurel tree, drifting with no obvious aim. Penthesilea sucked in a startled breath: it was the dark woman in the ragged black dress.

  The dark one stooped, examined some half-dead stick of a plant, and drifted to another garden bed. A young man entered the garden, too, his clothing impeccably clean and perfectly arranged. He called out a greeting to the woman in the garden—the salutation was ignored. Then he approached, holding out a dipper dripping with water, a friendly offering in the afternoon heat. Still, the woman paid him no mind.

  “Coroebus of Phrygia,” Helen said wryly. “He thinks he’s going to make Cassandra his wife. It doesn’t matter how many times that wretched creature looks right through him; Coroebus keeps trying.”

  The finely dressed young man stood poised and hopeful for a moment longer. Then, as Princess Cassandra turned away to pluck at the leaves of a laurel tree, he flung the water into the garden bed and marched away in defeat.

  Helen’s small laugh barely stirred the air. “I wonder. Is it love that’s blind, or madness?”

  “Madness?” Red-eyed Andromache’s voice was dull. “Cassandra saw this all and tried to warn us, and yet no one listened. Are you certain she’s the one who’s mad?”

  “No one should listen to that creature,” Helen muttered. “She scratched my face and tore out my hair, the wild bitch.”

  “And she told us all to send you away.” Andromache rounded on Helen, dullness burning up in a flare of anger. “She said you would bring us nothing but war—death. She was right.”

  “Go,” Helen said shortly.

  Andromache stepped closer to the golden beauty. The rage in her eyes was so terrible that Penthesilea stepped back. Andromache motioned abruptly to one of the slaves lingering along the opposite wall; the woman rushed forward, and Penthesilea could see that she carried a child in her arms. Andromache took the child and held it close—like a shield, Penthesilea thought, or like a token of hard-won victory.

  “You do not order me about,” Andromache said quietly to Helen. “If not for the death and destruction you brought, I would be queen of Troy. You do not order me.”

  “All the same,” Helen said levelly, “go. You’ve stirred my anger enough that I might strike you. I shouldn’t like to do that.”

  Andromache’s eyes narrowed. Her child made a grizzling sound, a growl to reflect his mother’s rage. “It’s you who should be struck. And struck down. If the gods had any mercy at all, they never would have sent you to doom us.”

  Helen held herself in icy stillness, and Andromache stormed past her, out the chamber door, which she slammed hard in her wake. Penthesilea expected Helen to say something unkind now that Andromache was not there to defend herself. Instead, Helen sighed.

  “Poor thing. It’s only grief that makes her forget her courtesy.”

  “Grief? Who has she lost?”

  “Her husband, Prince Hector—King Priam’s heir, the future king of Troy. Just a month ago, he was struck down by Achilles, that cruel madman the Achaeans so love, the beast on whom they hang their hopes.”

  Penthesilea raised her brows. It was strange to hear Helen, an Achaean herself, speak of her own people as if they were as foreign as Aegyptians. Perhaps she believed she truly was a Trojan now.

  “I confess I didn’t think Hector could be killed,” Helen said quietly. “For so many years, he was our champion, our shining hero. With him to inspire our men, we knew Troy would stand forever. And like that”—she snapped her delicate white fingers—“he was done. How can a hero be killed so easily?”

  Penthesilea, of all people, knew how little death cared for the glory of those it claimed. If death stayed its cold hand and spared heroes, Hippolyte would still be alive. She would still raid across the wide steppes, would even now be teaching her young daughters how to hold a spear.

  Helen folded her arms around her slender body, just as Andromache had done, and gazed out into the garden. Cassandra, her faded dress like the feathers of some haggard crow, stooped and plucked up a green sprig from one of the herbal beds. She held it to her pretty nose, inhaled, then let the sprig fall to the garden path.

  “So many years,” Helen said softly. “And in all that time, I never doubted, never feared. But now Hector is gone—Hector, of all men. And for the first time, I... ”

  She didn’t complete the dark thought, but Penthesilea heard her words all the same: Now I fear Troy will fall.

  Penthesilea tore her eyes from Cassandra, eerily compelling in her faded garb. Instead, she studied Helen’s face in profile, the pale, delicate skin flawless in the sunlight, the gray stare steady and calculating—and also tired.

  I was wrong, Penthesilea realized. Helen had changed, after all. Her calm surface was only a mask. Beneath, a steady current of weariness ran like the rush of a river. That hadn’t been a part of Helen before, at the long-ago wedding feast. The war had worn her down, as it had worn all of Troy down—and all the Achaean forces, too, Penthesilea suspected.

  “Your hero Hector is gone,” she said. “But new heroes can rise. Hope is not lost.”

  Those words were a kindly lie. No Cimmerian tribe had ever allowed such folly as a near decade of war; surely, both the Achaeans and the Trojans were fools or madder than Cassandra in the garden. If two factions could claw at one another for so long, then surely there had been no hope to begin with for either side. But it suited no one’s purpose, least of all her own, for Penthesilea to say so.

  Helen turned to her with a tiny s
mile. It might have been mocking. “And you believe you are that hero, Amazon?”

  Penthesilea bowed her head. “I make no claims on that front, Lady. But you are my cousin, and if you’ll have me, I will be yours, loyal and sworn. I’ll fight wherever you tell me to, and I’ll fight in your name alone.”

  Helen’s gaze flicked momentarily across her chamber to the women spinning on the far side of the room. She drew closer to Penthesilea and whispered, “And if I go back to my rightful husband, King Menelaus—back to the Achaeans, will you fight for me then?”

  Penthesilea blinked in surprise. “Are you considering—?”

  “Flight? Of course not. How could I? My father-in-law watches us all like a hawk.” Helen laughed lightly, as if she’d caught out Penthesilea in a jest. And maybe it had been a jest, after all. Smooth and cool as cream, Helen was nearly impossible to read.

  “It makes no difference, Lady,” Penthesilea said firmly. “My spear is yours, wherever you bid me throw it. The Cimmerians take no part in this war; you know that well. I’ve come to you for reasons of my own.”

  Helen sobered. “Troy may be doomed. You realize that, don’t you?”

  “I do, Lady. All I want is a chance to serve you with honor.”

  The woman’s smile was brittle and small. “And you believe I will confer honor on you?” Helen was not the same woman Penthesilea had thought to find at Troy. But her true nature made no difference. All she needed was a kinswoman to honor now that she had ripped her own family apart.

  “I believe you are the very image of honor,” she finally answered. And that, too, was a lie, but the gods would hardly think a lie as great a sin as Hippolyte’s death.

  Helen turned back to the garden, to Cassandra swaying in the laurel’s dappled shade. “Very well, Cousin. Then you are mine. I accept your pledge.”

  PHILOCTETES

  He bit back a curse as he stepped down onto the the beach. Pain leaped from his right foot and lanced up his leg with a long, searing throb, but Philoctetes refused to let that agony show on his face. The two honor guards sent to escort him to the tent of King Odysseus of Ithaca were young and looked hotheaded. They were exactly the sorts to gossip about other men’s weaknesses. Beyond the beach, where the Achaean tents were arrayed, he could hear men’s voices raised in a ragged rhythm, chanting their warriors’ songs.

  He snorted in disgust. There were many reasons to sing, many great and terrible things to sing of. But war was not one of them.

  Hades damn every last one of the gods. Philoctetes clenched his jaw, waiting for the pain to subside, to retreat once more to the pooled ache in his foot, the ever-present but manageable irritation that had dogged him for nearly ten years. Hades damn himself, too.

  A voice hailed him, and Philoctetes looked up. The young page who had accompanied him all the way from the island of Lemnos was leaning over the rail of Odysseus’ warship. The boy’s golden-brown curls were a sunlit dazzle against the ship’s black hull.

  “What is it? Odysseus has summoned me to the high king’s quarters; I mustn’t keep them waiting.” Much as I’d like to.

  “Your bow, Prince Philoctetes.” His first instinct was to refuse the bow. Leave it aboard the ship, his home for nearly a month, ever since word had come to Lemnos—since Philoctetes was dragged out of obscurity, back into this gods-be-damned, interminable jape of a war.

  But this was war, and even when war was at a slow simmer, one could never quite predict when the pot might boil over. Philoctetes was old enough to know that much.

  He nodded impatiently. The boy swung his legs over the side of the black ship and jumped down, agile and confident as a dancer. And why not? He was an island lad. Lemnians were never intimidated by the sea or seafaring, while Philoctetes, a rather useless and forgotten prince of Meliboea, had always harbored a creeping suspicion of Poseidon and his watery realm. A near decade on the island of Lemnos, nursing the snake bite on his foot that never quite healed, hadn’t been enough to change Philoctetes’ nature.

  The boy handed over Philoctetes’ bow and quiver. “When will you be back, my prince?”

  “I don’t rightly know. Whenever Odysseus is done with me. Don’t hold supper, but stay here on the ship. A camp full of lonely soldiers is no safe place for you. I’ll send word if I’ll be holed up past midnight.”

  Philoctetes followed the guards across the pale strand of the beach toward the golden plain beyond. The city of Troy sat like a crown upon its distant hill, gleaming and defiant. The ranks of siege tents stood much nearer, encircled by sturdy ramparts and gates of their own. Philoctetes squinted over the shadows of the camp toward the city, scratching his gray beard absently, lost in thought—in careful consideration of Troy.

  When Odysseus’ men had come for him last month, cajoling him out of his small but pleasant home on the southern coast of Lemnos, they’d told Philoctetes he was wanted as an advisor. “There’s no man in all the world who knows archery as you do, my lord,” the messenger had said. “And our high king and his allies need your expertise now.”

  No doubt a novel tactic was being planned even now in one of those tents—a more creative means of breaking Troy and bringing this long, grinding war to a close. How would bows and arrows play the crucial part? How could archers assault that high, walled city? Philoctetes couldn’t see a clear advantage for archers—not from this perspective, trudging over sand as it gave way to rough grass. With every step, the pain in Philoctetes’ foot stabbed upward again. He resisted the urge to curse his foot, to curse the snake who had bitten him nearly ten years past. He shouldn’t curse the wound, he knew. It had kept him out of the conflict for these many years; it had brought him more peace and quiet than any other man had known since that treacherous bitch Helen fucked off to Troy a decade ago.

  Yet here he was, being rowed for the shore where the siege still endured, where Troy still stood in defiance. No man can escape the bonds of an oath—not forever, not even with a crippled foot.

  That damnable oath—now there was a proper target for Philoctetes’ curses. It was nearly twenty years since he had been made to swear it—he and how many other good men? A dozen? More? He could no longer remember all the princes of all the lands who had traveled to Sparta to compete for Helen’s hand, hoping to claim the throne along with the beautiful, golden-haired princess. Philoctetes had had no interest in the bride, but Sparta, with its strategic location and powerful army, would have been a welcome addition to Meliboea’s holdings—or so his father had reasoned. And so the duty of courting Helen had fallen upon his only unmarried son, Philoctetes.

  He’d been twenty-five then: too old to stand out beside the pretty and lively younger suitors and not nearly old enough to garner the respect the older men enjoyed. His indifference to Helen’s charms surely set him at some disadvantage, too. The games and the boasts and the attempts to win Helen’s attention quickly grew tiresome for Philoctetes. It had come as a relief when Odysseus had proposed his clever solution to their conflict: the drawing of lots and a binding oath that each suitor would come to the winner’s aid should any ill ever befall Helen’s future husband.

  Philoctetes had nearly trembled with relief when he’d pulled one of the short straws. Odysseus, too, had held up a short straw, laughing and shaking his head good-naturedly. Philoctetes couldn’t say how Odysseus had managed to rig the lots, but even after so many years, he had no doubt that the outcome had been determined not by the gods, but by dark, smirking Odysseus. Menelaus had chosen the long straw, and Helen’s father had beamed, and Odysseus had clapped the victor on his shoulder and said with a laugh, “The Fates have made their will known.”

  But Odysseus hadn’t wanted Helen, either, had he? Not truly. Perhaps he had seen something in Helen that the other suitors had missed. Perhaps he had noted, those many years ago, the calm and icy directness of Helen’s gaze, as young as she was. Perhaps he had read the danger in her—a book that was open to keen Odysseus but closed tight to lesser men.

&nbs
p; Whatever sly trick Odysseus had wrought, all the suitors had ended up swearing on a sacrificial horse to answer Menelaus’ call should any harm befall Helen of Sparta. Philoctetes could still feel the flesh of the dead horse beneath his foot, could still hear the buzzing of the flies. The bloody haunch yielding a little as Helen stood upon it, the flies droning along as he recited the words.

  An oath as great as that one couldn’t be broken lightly. An oath of that magnitude couldn’t be broken at all.

  “I actually saw Hector’s body,” one guard said to the other, tramping, oblivious, ahead of Philoctetes. “A great, gaping wound right here.” He tapped his throat. “Prince Achilles’ spear must have torn through the back of his neck.”

  The breath froze in Philoctetes’ chest. An ache uncurled inside him, stronger by far than the lingering snake bite and more persistent in its poison.

  Achilles.

  After so many years, his very name still had the power to stir Philoctetes, to send that golden glow racing through this body, to cut him wide open with longing. Strange—almost ten years, and Prince Achilles of Phthia was still everything to him. The whole world. Reason enough to turn his back on Meliboea and remain on the island, where memory of the young warrior’s beauty still lingered in every grove and meadow.

  It was stranger still when Philoctetes considered that Achilles was only a fleeting memory now, a patchwork of images barely connected by time and place. That summer, after the emissaries sent to Troy to retrieve Helen had failed, Odysseus had sent Philoctetes to Lemnos to conscript men for the upcoming war. And Prince Achilles of Phthia had arrived with a captive youth, whom he never quite managed to sell into slavery. Somehow Achilles and his band of boys had brought Philoctetes into their midst. He was incongruous among them, a thickening goat twice their age with gray streaking his hair and beard, but all through the long, hot days of summer he had run with them, laughed with them, hunted and sang war songs with lads who were barely old enough to grow a few wisps of hair on their own chins. And he had felt like a boy again himself for those precious months—too soon gone. He had fallen in love like a boy, too. Fallen and landed hard and never picked himself up again.