by Kate Quinn
Achilles—the wind tossing his soft waves of hair as he sang beneath an olive tree, as the leaves tumbled down around him. His hand on the shaft of a spear, skin smooth as only a boy’s can be, save for the red of an insect bite on one of his knuckles. The broadness of his shoulders disappearing into shadow as he led his captive youth away from the fire—his willing captive, the luckiest man the gods ever made. Achilles, the smell of dust and sweat. A high, soft laugh like a woman’s, rising like sacrificial smoke to the gods. Piercing pale green eyes turning to Philoctetes in the firelight, holding his gaze for a moment, the weight of words unspoken between them. And then an owl called in the dark forest, and Achilles looked away, laughing, always laughing.
Then a hunt for rabbits in a farmer’s field. And a snake coiled tight among the wheat. A fire in Philoctetes’ heel. He woke two days later in bed in his borrowed home, head swimming, choking on the taste of vomit, and the summer was over, and Achilles was gone.
But Philoctetes had never stopped loving him. It was as hopeless then as it was now, for during that blissful summer, Achilles was already too old for Philoctetes to take him as a lover. Not that a man like Achilles would deign to love someone as unremarkable as Philoctetes. Achilles was half-god, and anyone who set eyes on him knew it without being told. Splendid in his strength, beautiful in his arrogance, Achilles could reduce the greatest of men to nothing with a look. And Philoctetes—well, the best that could be said of him was that he was handy with a bow and made a tempting target for vipers.
Of course Achilles was here now. How not? He was the greatest warrior in the known world—Philoctetes had heard the tales of Achilles’ career unfolding, even on Lemnos. War was his natural element, and now, after a near decade of conflict, Troy was war itself.
Philoctetes had heard how Achilles had defeated Mythimna and Mytilene, cutting down their king, who was armored and mounted on a chariot while Achilles was afoot and naked. Philoctetes’ imagination had fed on that feast for several sleepless nights, but he had seen nothing of the beautiful hero, naked or clothed, since that long-ago summer.
But Achilles is here. Now. In this camp.
Or so Philoctetes hoped. According to the messengers who’d fetched him from his island, it had been a full six weeks now since Hector had been slain, perhaps more. Had Achilles departed? What more could a man accomplish after slaying a foe as powerful as Hector?
Philoctetes’ escorts chattered on, sharing the excitement of war as only fresh young men can. The nearer they drew to the Achaean camp, the thicker Philoctetes’ anxiety became. He was once a decent warrior—serviceable enough, but no hero. Those days were far behind him now. He couldn’t even walk without limping, and he had lain low, allowing this conflict to pass him by like a gentle breeze. Not that Meliboea would have had any use for him, one prince out of many and crippled by a damned snake.
He only wanted the sanctuary of his island now. All the way from Lemnos to Troy, he’d felt like a dead man being ferried across the Styx. The world into which he was going, dragged on by the power of Odysseus’ thrice-damned oath, was not a world he could recognize. If Achilles was no longer at Troy, then what was there for Philoctetes?
He was sweating with the effort, and his whole leg burned by the time they found High King Agamemnon’s quarters. A grinning Mycenaean spearman, no doubt one of Agamemnon’s favorites, raised his spear in invitation, and Philoctetes stepped inside. A scattering of brightly colored but well-worn rugs made a passable floor, and strewn over that floor were chests and casks, lamps on iron tripods, a few articles of clothing piled near a stool, waiting for slaves to come for the washing. One chest, unlocked, its lid thrown back, revealed a bronze breastplate embossed with the image of the lion of Mycenae. The interior reeked of burnt oil, metal, and the breath of many men.
Those very men clustered around a table, heads together, talking over a map or a scroll. At the sound of footfalls, one looked up, met Philoctetes’ eye, and gestured the others to silence with a simple lift of his hand.
Agamemnon of Mycenae rose slowly from his seat. It had been years since Philoctetes had seen him, but he recognized the man on the instant: tall, whip thin, long of face and longer of nose, his mouth pinched and tight. Gray feathered his temples, but far more gray had invaded Philoctetes’ hair since he and Agamemnon had last met. The eyes were still the same, though—chestnut-brown and commanding in their intensity.
Philoctetes bobbed his head in greeting.
“The old prince of Meliboea,” Agamemnon said. “We feared you’d forgotten about your oath to Menelaus.”
“Forgotten? No, my king.” Would that I could. Philoctetes took a few steps toward the table, doing nothing now to disguise his limp. “But as you can see, I’m not much use on the battlefield anymore.”
Another man stood, and Philoctetes recognized him, too. Not nearly as tall as Agamemnon, whatever Odysseus lacked in height he made up for with a bull’s chest and shoulders. Age had touched him less than any of the others; he still wore a proud crown of thick black hair, and his smile was as bold and mocking as it ever was.
“Not much use?” Odysseus said. “I think you’re wrong about that, Brother.”
Philoctetes cringed inwardly at the familiarity, but he was a prince of Meliboea, even if he had spent a decade languishing unwanted on an island. He had more sense than to show his discomfiture to Odysseus and his friends. “Your messenger said my skill as an archer is needed. But I confess I can see no way to—”
Agamemnon silenced him with a wave of his hand. “It’s not your skill we need now, though the gods know it’s laudable enough. This”—he tapped one of the documents spread on the table before him, a scrap of textured Aegyptian papyrus—“is a note sent by one of my best servants. It’s a notation of a prophecy recently given by Chryses.”
Philoctetes noted the dark spark in Agamemnon’s eye, the tightening of his lips; he had no liking for this Chryses, whoever he was. But he thought it prudent to keep his observations to himself. “I’m afraid I don’t know that name.”
“Of course not.” Odysseus laughed quietly. “You’ve been holed up on your rock almost since this war began.”
“Chryses is a priest of Apollo,” Agamemnon said. “Trojan and lacking an eye to make him even more useless. But still, his people give great consideration to his prophecies. I have no admiration for the man.” His eyes narrowed as he spoke those words, their corners tensing with a sudden energy that Philoctetes couldn’t help but notice. Agamemnon was tempering his words. It was clear that he hated the priest of Apollo.
“But,” Agamemnon said, “a prophecy can be a useful tool if it’s widely believed. His words seem to suggest that under the right circumstances—well, he is most insistent, Philoctetes, that this war can be ended—that Troy could possibly fall—if we only hold the right weapon.”
“I’m glad to hear it, my king. But what do I have to do with it?”
Odysseus leaned one elbow on the table, fixing Philoctetes with a dark-eyed stare. “The war won’t end, so the old Cyclops says, until we have the bow of the greatest hero of them all. The bow of Heracles.”
Philoctetes felt his heart still for one moment—a moment that stretched to an uncomfortable, impossible length. His grip tightened on the bow; he resisted the urge to hug it to his chest like a possessive child.
“How did you know,” he asked softly, “that I have Heracles’ bow?”
Odysseus must have noticed the whitening of Philoctetes’ knuckles, the way his fist clutched hard at the polished horn. “What,” he said in disbelief, “that’s not the very bow, is it?”
“It belonged to Heracles once,” Philoctetes said. “It’s mine now.”
“It’s rather plain, that’s all.” Odysseus cast a smirk at the bow. “I’d expect a hero’s weapon to be grander—a little silver on the grip, maybe, or at least a pair of tits etched on the limbs somewhere.”
The men laughed. Philoctetes did not.
Of course men li
ke these expected grandness from a hero’s weapon. But a bow was a bow; its purpose was utility. All it had to do was fire an arrow.
Men like these expected grandness from their heroes, too. But a man was only a man. Heracles, beneath his lion-skin cape and his roaring laugh, had been just a man, too. Big as he was, his legend was bigger still, even while he lived. But Philoctetes had known him well—had run with him and fought with him in the days before Helen and the the drawn straws, before the oath that had doomed the world to war. Heracles was called a hero. All the world had thought him invincible—Heracles himself had often behaved as if death could never touch him. But in the end, poison had taken him in agony, and when his servants and his followers saw the great man weakened and in pain, crying out for mercy, they had fled in fear and disbelief.
Only Philoctetes had stayed by his side until the hard and horrible end. Philoctetes had built a pyre to send that invincible hero’s smoke up to the gods. He’d helped Heracles climb atop it and lay down at his side to hold his friend and comfort him until death finally released him. And when finally the hero’s suffering ended, Philoctetes had lit the pyre and walked away.
But before he’d expired, Heracles had taken a key from a string around his neck and pressed it into Philoctetes’ hand. Back at Heracles’ hunting tent, abandoned by the servants, silent as a tomb, Philoctetes had found a locked chest. Inside the chest was his friend’s favorite bow: plain, polished horn, simple and serviceable. Exactly what a bow ought to be.
It was a good bow, and Philoctetes, with his lifelong love of archery, knew how to appreciate its craftsmanship, how to use it well. It had been his pride during his free days, during those months of summer when he had ached with the blissful pain of love and dared not confess his longing to anyone. He had only told a few people how he’d acquired the bow. Only his dearest friends.
He swallowed hard, holding Agamemnon’s stare, and when he spoke, his voice was hoarse and gravelly. “How did you know that I have the bow of Heracles?”
“I told them.” A voice from behind him at the tent’s entrance. A voice he hadn’t heard in ten years, but still he recognized it on the instant. It sent fire through his veins and squeezed his heart with a merciless fist.
Philoctetes turned. Achilles stood in the lamplight, gazing at him steadily, his face devoid of all expression but somehow still tinged by weariness and grief. His hair tumbled in waves toward his shoulders; what had once been the wisps of a boy’s beard had thickened to the full, rough shadow of manhood on his exquisitely sharp and strong jaw. The smell of dust and sweat and summer heat struck Philoctetes like a blow, though it was only a memory—only a memory. His disbelieving gaze fell to Achilles’ hand, hanging loosely at his side. All the softness of youth was gone; the skin was callused and cracked and hardened by war. And there was no red welt on his knuckle. Of course there was not.
But it was Achilles—it was Achilles.
Philoctetes heard Agamemnon’s voice, muffled by the pounding of his own heart in his ears. “So will you fight for us, then?”
He didn’t tear his eyes from Achilles’ face—couldn’t have done it, even if he’d wanted to. But he answered Agamemnon without hesitation.
“Yes, I’ll fight for you. However I can.”
PENTHESILEA
Penthesilea woke in late in the afternoon—or perhaps she didn’t wake at all. Ever since Hippolyte’s death, sleep had mostly evaded her, and when it came, it was shallow and fleeting, laced with dark dreams and haunted by the sound of her sister’s final breaths.
She rolled over on her cot, its frame creaking, and stood on legs that trembled from grief and exhaustion. Her stomach felt hollow and sick at the same time. In all the days since she’d arrived in Troy—half a moon’s turn, now—she had eaten very little and drank only when Helen demanded that she take water or diluted wine sweetened with plenty of fortifying honey. Her appetite was small; there was no room inside her for anything but sorrow, no matter how Helen chided her to eat, arguing that a trembling, stick-thin warrior would do her no good when the time came to fight. Who knew when that would be; there had been no fighting at all since Penthesilea had arrived two weeks ago. All Troy seemed too sunk in stillness to venture outside the great gates, even for a raid.
The cot was set into a small servant’s alcove in a corner of Helen’s great chamber. Penthesilea lingered behind the alcove’s curtain, listening. There was no murmur of women’s voices in Helen’s quarters, no cries or accusations from Andromache, whose eyes were still red whenever Penthesilea saw her. There was only the slow, resigned clacking of the loom.
She pulled the curtain aside. Helen stood at her loom on the far side of the chamber, her straight and slender back to Penthesilea, passing the shuttle slowly through a forest of white threads.
“Awake?” Helen asked in that remarkable voice—carrying, strong and smooth, but never loud. She did not look around.
“Yes,” Penthesilea said.
“Good. The gods know I could stand some company.”
Penthesilea went to her, padding across the chamber in her bare feet. She wasn’t used to moving in such absolute silence, but she had taken all the ornaments out of her hair, all the discs of silver and shell. She was in mourning, and the bright music of their movement was unsuited to her grief. She would be in mourning forever.
Penthesilea looked over Helen’s shoulder at the cloth growing slowly on the loom. Surely, even a slave girl could have done better. There were slubs in the fabric, and the pattern of keys and suns had broken here and there. It was careless work—distracted work. Helen was capable of doing much better, but the woman’s sigh as she passed the shuttle again, her distant stare out her chamber window into the sun-beaten garden, told Penthesilea that all effort and care were beyond Helen now.
“Your maids, my lady?” Penthesilea asked.
Usually the talk and laughter of Helen’s servants made weaving more bearable for her, carrying her sharp mind away from the drudgery of the task. But Helen sighed in the silence.
“I sent them away. They’re fools; I can’t abide their mindless chatter today. There’s fresh water in the ewer, though. Drink. You won’t be any use as my personal warrior if you die of thirst. Or starvation. You’ll be sure to eat well tonight, won’t you?”
Her tone was cool and detached, but Penthesilea had known her cousin long enough now to hear the subtle note of concern. She gave a tiny smile of gratitude for Helen’s care.
“I will, if it will please you.”
“Excellent. Though I still don’t know what I’m to do with my own sworn Amazon. At least you are a novelty. There’s precious little novelty in Troy anymore.”
The shuttle passed through the threads again.
Penthesilea poured a cup of water and drank. The water was cool and sweet; it felt good in her throat. She’d been thirstier than she knew. She drank another cup while Helen watched with approval.
“Look at me,” Helen burst out suddenly. An unexpected bitterness tinted her voice. Helen rarely showed any emotion, even when Penthesilea was sure it was rippling under her cool surface like wind across the grass. “Look at me. Weaving. I hate weaving. It was all I did back in Sparta. I swore when I left that place that I’d never touch a shuttle again, that I’d burn any loom they put in front of me. Yet here I am, doing it anyway, after all these years. What else am I to do?”
Penthesilea leaned against the windowsill, her back to the garden, watching her cousin and waiting. More was coming; she was sure of that.
Helen stared past Penthesilea, out into the garden with its laurel tree and its dappled shade. But she seemed to see nothing except the private images that tumbled through her memory.
“I wonder,” she said, and now her voice was not smooth and grand. It was small and cracked, very nearly broken. “Does my daughter weave?”
“I remember your daughter well,” Penthesilea said. She remembered, too, the blankness in King Menelaus of Sparta’s eyes when she had congratu
lated him on the good fortune of having a daughter. Achaeans did not value daughters as Cimmerians did. “She was lively and red-haired. A pretty little girl.”
“Little, yes. She’s not a little girl any longer. All this time, I’ve tried to send for her. So has Priam. We’ve offered riches Menelaus could hardly refuse. But he did refuse—turned us down every time. All to spite me—only to spite me.”
Helen drew a long, shaking breath. When she spoke again, she was calm, composed. “Hermione is fifteen now. Ready to marry, and she would be married, no doubt, if her father weren’t off at war.”
“Perhaps she enjoys the maiden’s life,” Penthesilea offered.
“Yes.” A quiet laugh, wry and self-deprecating. “Would that we were all so lucky to avoid marriage and remain free.” The shuttle moved again in her delicate white hands. “Still, I wonder if she weaves.”
Penthesilea helped herself to another cup of water. “Would you want her to weave, my lady? If you despise it so?”
She didn’t look up from her loom, but one corner of Helen’s mouth curled, and those sea-gray eyes sharpened. “Since when does it matter what a woman wants? We all end up in drudgery, one way or another. I suppose it’s all the gods made us for, after all. Even me, Zeus’s own daughter.” She set the shuttle in its holder and picked at the skewed threads of her tapestry. “One would think the daughter of a god could manage to weave like Arachne. Apparently not.”
“You’re only distracted, my lady. This war—”
Helen cut her off abruptly, shaking her pale gold curls. “This war. This war like every other war.”
Not exactly like every other war, Penthesilea thought soberly. It has dragged on for nearly ten bloody years. But she knew better than to say such a thing to Helen.
“What is the point of war?” Helen asked.
