A Song of War: a novel of Troy

by Kate Quinn

  “May I?” Philoctetes jerked his head toward the wine. “My throat is very dry.”

  “Help yourself, but none for me. Wine has lost all its savor.”

  Philoctetes poured and drank. The wine was exceptional—as one would expect in surroundings such as these. Achilles watched him steadily, saying nothing as Philoctetes tasted the wine, betraying none of his thoughts or feelings with the slightest flicker.

  But then those eyes lowered to the bow resting across Philoctetes’ knees.

  “So you do still have it. The bow of Heracles.”

  “Of course.” Philoctetes set the empty cup aside. The wine burned in his throat, a pleasant warmth already fortifying his wobbly courage. “You don’t think I would have gotten rid of such a treasure, do you?”

  Achilles smiled. A rare thing, his smile—if memory could be trusted. “I remember you shooting rabbits with it. And the rest of us teased you that a hero’s bow should be used for a nobler purpose. And you said, ‘There’s nothing nobler than supper, lads. If you don’t believe me, I’ll keep all the meat for myself, and you can dine on roots and berries tonight.’”

  “I remember,” Philoctetes said. I remember you singing beneath an olive tree. I remember the leaves falling at your feet; even they couldn’t resist you. He forced a smile. “Do you recall... ”

  They went on that way for some time, recounting the summer of Lemnos when they had left all thoughts of war behind, for a few months at least. The longer they reminisced, the younger Philoctetes felt. Year after year fell from him, peeling back and tearing itself away. He was like a snake, shedding its dull old skin to reveal brighter scales beneath. Another cup of wine vanished, and then Achilles rose and poured for himself, carrying his smell of dust and sweat and warm metal into Philoctetes’ vicinity. They laughed—cautiously at first, then with growing humor. And before the night had gathered, they were like young men again—both of them, even Philoctetes.

  They were like younger men, but they were not men untouched by war. Even as the wine flowed and Achilles’ laughter grew louder and more frequent, a shroud of sorrow clung to him, shadowing his face and edging all his words. And after a time, all the stories of Lemnos had been recounted, and silence fell over them both.

  Achilles rose slowly from his ivory chair. He opened an ornate black trunk and stood over it, staring down at its contents, hair obscuring his face. Philoctetes couldn’t see what was in the trunk, so he left the bow lying on the table beside the wine jug and joined Achilles, his skin tingling from the other man’s nearness.

  The trunk housed a set of armor, more beautifully made, more intricately decorated than any Philoctetes had seen before.

  “By Zeus,” he muttered, gazing down at the layers of bright enamel over embossed figures so delicately made it seemed only a god could have crafted them.

  Achilles lifted the shield from its trunk. He turned it in his hands like a wheel, and the many delicate figures spun and tumbled before Philoctetes’ eyes. Achilles stopped turning the shield; the scene that was upright depicted a wedding. Guests dancing merrily and a bride and groom standing side by side, bright and resplendent in their glittering colors.

  Achilles touched the bride with one finger, and Philoctetes’ heart made a bitter stutter-step.

  “Briseis,” the warrior said.

  “Your... your wife?”

  He smiled ruefully, shook his head. “No. Mother of my child.”

  “Your son?” Philoctetes remembered—he had learned in the summer of Lemnos that Achilles had a son, even then, young as he was. He’d fathered the boy when he wasn’t more than a boy himself—fourteen, fifteen at best—and had never seen his get. Philoctetes had assumed the woman who’d birthed Achilles’ son had meant nothing to him. But watching him now, the way he touched the woman on the shield with such tenderness, Philoctetes wasn’t so sure.

  “No—not that son, at least. My first son, Neoptolemus, is old enough now to be a warrior himself. I hear he’s sent word to Agamemnon that he’ll be joining us soon.”

  “This child, then,” Philoctetes said. “A boy or a girl?”

  “Good question,” Achilles answered. “I don’t know yet, and I’ll never find out.”

  “What do you mean, you’ll never find out?”

  “You know the story. The prophecy.”

  Yes, Philoctetes knew the prophecy: that Achilles would die young and in the glory of war, but his name would live forever. He’d heard Achilles speak of it on Lemnos. Achilles hadn’t seemed troubled by the prospect then. But when a man is young, he thinks he will go on being young forever. He thinks glory and greatness are his due and all he will ever require.

  “I won Briseis in battle,” Achilles said, grazing the image of the woman again with his rough fingers. “She was a queen, but she came to me a slave. Still, she never held herself like a slave, never had the look of a conquered woman.”

  He paused.

  “Honorable,” Philoctetes said. It seemed he was expected to say something.

  “And strong,” Achilles agreed. “Brave. The things a woman ought to be, but so often is never allowed to be.”

  Philoctetes nodded. Achilles of all people would know; he had been raised among women, his mad mother’s attempt to thwart the fate of his early death.

  “But do you know why I liked Briseis? Because she could dance.”

  Philoctetes chuckled, startled out of the sober mood by the unexpected image of Achilles, the irrepressible god-born hero, leering at a dancing woman like a common spearman in a tavern.

  Achilles shot him a piercing stare, and the laugh died in Philoctetes’ throat. He swallowed hard.

  “When I played my lyre and Briseis danced, she was so beautiful, so alive. I almost felt alive then, myself. Almost.”

  “You are alive,” Philoctetes said quietly.

  Achilles shook his head. “No.” He lowered the shield back into the trunk and shut its heavy black lid. “No. If I ever was alive, I’m not any longer. This war is almost all I’ve ever known, and even before it started, it dictated my fate. And what is it all for? For the pride of Menelaus, for the gain of Agamemnon. For nothing.”

  He turned and stalked back to his ivory chair, sank onto its seat. For a moment, he sat staring blankly into the flame of the nearest lamp. The lyre lay forgotten between his feet.

  “But war is all I’m good at, Philoctetes. All I’m good for.”

  “Surely, that is not true.”

  “All my reputation—my livelihood itself—depends on playing this game. On allowing myself to be woven into this pattern, set in the warp and weft of the world from the time I was a child. Maybe before that. All this, just for the glory of two men.”

  Philoctetes sank slowly on his own chair. He rolled his cup between his hands, but he had no more thirst for the wine. “I’ve often wondered if Agamemnon and Menelaus think themselves god-born, like you. What else could make them go on fighting for so long? Helen herself certainly isn’t worth it.”

  One side of Achilles’ mouth curved up in a wry smile. “God-born? Like me? That’s what they all say, isn’t it? It’s what my mother always claimed: that she was a goddess. And I have seen enough strange things in my life, experienced enough, to believe her. Yet more and more often, I can’t help but feel that I’m just a man. Like Menelaus and Agamemnon. Like you. Like Hector.”

  His voice sank to a gravelly depth on that final name. Philoctetes traced the rim of the cup with an anxious finger.

  “Odysseus told me how you made an end of Hector,” he said, not cheerfully as a young warrior might, but gently, sorrowfully, for he sensed that Achilles took no joy in that victory.

  “I did make an end of him. And by all the gods, I wish I hadn’t.” Achilles raised a hand as if to forestall Philoctetes, though he’d had no intention of protesting the younger man’s words. “I don’t regret avenging Patrocles—not for a moment. He was my dearest friend, one of the only men I still respected in all the world.”

&n
bsp; More than a friend, Philoctetes knew—a lover. Prince Patrocles of Aegina had not come to Lemnos that summer; he had been recruiting spearmen elsewhere, but Achilles spoke of him often, and the affection in his voice had been plain. How Philoctetes had envied the absent Patrocles, who had been fortunate enough to know Achilles when he was still beardless, young enough to lie in a man’s bed without dishonor.

  “Patrocles died because of me,” Achilles went on, “because I was too proud and ill-tempered to do my duty. I wished to defy my fate, and Patrocles paid the price at the point of Hector’s spear. No, I don’t regret avenging him.

  “But do you know what Hector told me when we stood face-to-face? He said, ‘We two know this war to be foolish. We two can end it.’ And he was right. We could have put a stop to it all by simply throwing down our weapons and refusing to fight. I knew his words were true in the moment. But Patrocles was dead. So instead of ending this gods-damned war, I killed Hector.”

  The pain in Achilles’ voice was so raw that Philoctetes felt it stabbing in his own chest. He struggled to find words, but the gods gave him nothing to say.

  “What does it matter?” Achilles went on. He nudged the lyre with his toe. “I’m already as dead as Hector.”

  “No.”

  “I have been for years, my friend. This war, and my prophesied fate, have ground all the life out of me, if there was ever any life to begin with. Perhaps if I’d let Hector live—perhaps if we had forced some peace between us, without regard for what Priam wanted, or Helen or Menelaus and Agamemnon... perhaps then I might have evaded my fate. But I played into the gods’ hands, and now I will die here on the Plain of Troy.”

  Philoctetes’ hands ached with the desire to reach out to Achilles, to touch him, to feel the life that was in him and to make him feel the leap and power of his own pulse, too—to show him that he still lived and would go on living. But he was an old half-crippled man, not beautiful and dancing like Briseis, not a stalwart spear-brother like Patrocles. He was nothing beside the hero—who, even in his despair, slouching on his ivory throne, was more beautiful to Philoctetes than any sunrise and every song.

  Useless, he told himself bitterly. You snake-struck, useless old fool.

  But how, after all, could one comfort the god-born?

  “This war will never end,” Achilles said dully.

  “All wars end sooner or later.”

  “Not this one. Not in my lifetime.”

  “Stop that, Achilles; you’ll live to see an older age than I will.”

  He shook his head slowly, staring into the lamp again, distant and dark. “I think of this child of mine, the one Briseis will bear. Will I send my son—or my daughter—out into battle to be killed, just as Priam did to Hector?”

  “Priam may have lost many sons, but he still has a few more.”

  “And I alone killed four in a single day. One of them his heir, who would have struck a peace with me if only I’d listened. What will become of my child? Whose spear will strike him down?”

  “No one’s,” Philoctetes said firmly. “We’ll end the war long before that. Before your Briseis even feels her first labor pain, if the gods are good.”

  “If the gods are good,” Achilles said with a bitter laugh. “When have they ever been good?”

  He stood abruptly and moved toward his bed, half-hidden now by night’s shadows. “I’m tired, Philoctetes.”

  “Then sleep, my friend.” He rose and gathered his bow.

  Achilles turned back to him, a startling, piercing pain in his eyes. “Stay.”

  Slowly, Philoctetes lowered the bow back to the table. Achilles had no desire to bring him to his bed—he was sure of that. He only wanted the company, the comfort of a friend’s presence. Of life in his tent. But it was enough for Philoctetes. He nodded and shrugged to hide the grateful flush that was rising to his face. He turned away and said casually, “Well and good, if you wish it. I’d rather sleep in your tent than on Odysseus’ ship. I’ll just duck outside for a moment.”

  Achilles grinned, jerked his head. “The latrine pits are that way.”

  But it wasn’t the latrine pits Philoctetes wanted. The isolation and clear, cool flow of the river still called to him; he dragged his foot through the final fringe of the camp until a darkness deeper than the night closed over his head—the stretch of trees, well thinned by many years of siege, that clung to the Scamander’s banks.

  The night sounds of the camp dwindled behind him, replaced by the whisper of the river. Philoctetes sank onto a flat, cool stone and watched the river’s surface, the reflection of a thousand stars rippling with the water’s flow. The smell of mud, of damp leaves, was sweet and soothing after the stench of a war camp. He closed his eyes and drank of it deeply, clinging with desperate hands to his memories of Lemnos. Again he saw the olive leaves falling, and again he heard the strum of Achilles’ fingers on the lyre.

  “You will not die here,” Philoctetes whispered. “I won’t let you.” But he didn’t know how one old man could stop the motion of fate, its inevitable turn like the shield rotating in Achilles’ hands.

  He heard a soft rustle on the river’s bank and opened his eyes. A small black thing hopped and bobbed at the water’s edge. Starlight glinting off the river limned it in silver, so its shape was clear, but it took Philoctetes a heartbeat or two to truly recognize what he was seeing.

  A crow. A carrion eater. And at night, when such an evil bird should have been in its roost.

  Uneasily, Philoctetes lowered his hands to the stone, ready to push himself up and hobble away from this place. But the bird saw his movement and turned its head, pinning him in place with its stare. He could see the moon glowing in the small black bead of its eye. The crow flipped over a dead leaf with its beak, hopped again along the gravelly strand, then pointed its dagger bill directly at Philoctetes. It called once, harshly, into the night.

  Philoctetes lurched to his feet. The crow startled and flapped away, but the damage was already done. The omen was given, the bones of fate cast.

  “I won’t let him die here,” Philoctetes shouted after the bird as it winged off across the river.

  But he was one man alone, who had nothing to fight with, nothing to shield Achilles, save for love—the most earnest yet the weakest shield a man could hold.

  He went back to Achilles’ tent as quickly as his burning foot would allow.

  Sleep evaded Philoctetes for much of the night. On a pallet at the foot of Achilles’ bed, he lay staring up at the invisible peak of the tent, its fabric, its drapings, everything lost in shadow. The camp outside was mostly quiet but for the occasional low murmur of men’s voices, the rustling and stamping of horses tethered in their lines. He kept expecting to hear the crow’s call again, but it never came.

  Over all else was the sound of Achilles in sleep, his breaths even and steady. He slept heavily and undisturbed, as if he were already dead.

  When the horses began to stir and nicker, Philoctetes knew dawn was approaching. He rolled from his pallet as quietly as he could and stood slowly, his old bones protesting at least as much as his foot did. Someone was padding quietly from the far side of the huge tent. Through darkness that had just begun to give way to the pale dawn seeping in from outside, Philoctetes made out the now-familiar silhouette of Automedon, stretching his thin arms over his head as he crossed the gloom.

  Together they stepped outside.

  “Did he sleep well?” Automedon asked quietly, toeing the remains of a long-dead fire in a charred, shallow pit.

  “Far better than I did,” Philoctetes answered.

  “I’m glad to hear it. He hasn’t rested well since Hector, you know. The army is still giddy over Hector’s death, but I think Achilles—”

  Rough shouts cut Automedon short. They turned and gazed in the direction of the camp’s gates and soon saw a commotion of Achaean spearmen approaching the Myrmidon camp, materializing out of the shadows. At the center of the shouting crowd strode a Trojan herald
with his formal staff, escorting a tall, harsh-faced warrior whose helmet bore a crest of sea-colored feathers.

  As they drew nearer, Philoctetes could make out the warrior’s shouts over the tangle of gruff Achaean voices. “Peace! I have only a message! A message for Achilles.”

  Automedon started toward the knot of men, no doubt to quiet them. But the damage had already been done. The tent flap opened; Achilles stepped into the gray morning chill. He didn’t look like he’d been recently asleep. His dark hair was unmussed, and there was not so much as a wrinkle evident on his deep red tunic. He had even found time to don his sandals.

  The band of Achaeans gave a collective shout when they spotted Achilles. He held up a hand to quiet them.

  “Aeneas of Dardania,” he greeted the harsh-faced man in the tall blue plumes. “I see you didn’t die of that wound I gave you six weeks ago. Did your mother, Aphrodite, heal you with magic balm?”

  “You will not profane the name of my mother, Ishara, with your crude Achaean terms—”

  Achilles cut him off. “What do you want?”

  The Trojan removed his helmet stiffly. “I come bearing a message from the Lady Cassandra, daughter of Priam.” His voice was harsh as the crow that had cawed at Philoctetes last night.

  Achilles gestured impatiently. “I am sent to tell you that Troy’s best warrior comes to challenge you at sunrise. To avenge Hector’s death.”

  “You?”

  “I would count it hubris to call myself Troy’s greatest warrior. Helen of Sparta”—the distaste in his voice was clear as he emphasized her proper title—”has seen fit to bestow the compliment on a recent new ally.”

  The watching Achaeans cursed in mocking tones. Achilles said nothing but folded his arms across his chest, waiting for silence to return.

  “On your side of the Scaean Gate,” Aeneas added.

  “Troy’s best warrior,” one of the Achaeans said, laughing. “You mean the best among the scraps they have left. Achilles killed Hector, man! Are you Trojans so eager to cross the Styx?”