A Song of War: a novel of Troy

by Kate Quinn

  My eyes roved this way and that across the dark streets and roofs of the lower city. I’d half expected to see drunken youths trying to ride the great horse, but it stood alone and glowering in the dark square. Only one figure was visible down there on a balcony above the square. I couldn’t make out details, but I instinctively knew who it was. Sleep had fled me for good now, and there was little point in returning to my bed to stare at the dark ceiling, so I determined to go down to the city and keep that lonely figure company. I briefly considered entering the house once more to collect my sword and my helm with its high plume the color of the sea in spring, so chosen to honor my mother, who had been born from the sea. But no. I had no need of my weapon or my high plumes, and I did not wish to disturb the others in their slumber. Instead, I grasped my cloak from the balcony rail where I had left it earlier and threw it over my back, gently trotting down the steps on bare feet. The narrow alleys of the lower city could be filthy and filled with debris, but for all its glory, the city was not a huge place, and the wider streets were well paved and, in better times, were swept clear of muck daily. I padded along the various flagged ways until I approached the Scaean Square. One street back from the wide space, I climbed a staircase and passed between two now-silent houses to the high balcony where that lone figure stood, keeping vigil by the light of a heavy moon.

  Cassandra had not slept. Her face was taut and troubled, her hair wild and feet bare; I wondered whether she had stood at this square all day and through the night. Nothing about my strange cousin would surprise me, though I felt an odd kinship with her that was lacking with most of Priam’s selfish brood. Cassandra, like me, felt the closeness of the gods and communed with the lost.

  “Everyone calls me names, as if their words might still injure me,” she said without even looking around to see who had approached. “Madwoman. Mouth of Evil. Ebony fool. But they’re the fools. I don’t know how, but this cursed horse... ” she trailed off, shaking her head.

  I stepped forward and leaned on the rail beside her, shivering as I looked out across the dark square below, the walls beyond, and in the distance, the wine-dark sea. The memory of Hector’s ravaged ghost was still fresh, and his warning glance when added to Cassandra’s certainty was enough to make me feel distinctly uncomfortable. “What could a wooden horse do?” I asked, though my mind was already running wild with images of the huge beast trampling warriors to death beneath its great timber hooves.

  “We will know soon. Perhaps this night,” she said.

  I shivered again. Perhaps it had been a step too far to steal an offering to the gods. Had we not condemned the Achaeans for their theft of the Palladion? And now we somehow felt comfortable taking a divine offering from its own sacred place into our home? Hubris was not the only sin in Troy. Hypocrisy was also rife. Something thrilled through me as I watched that horse, and I felt suddenly far too naked for my own good despite the kilt and the cloak.

  “I think I shall return home for my sword,” I said quietly, but as I turned away, Cassandra’s hand shot out and grasped my wrist. She was strong despite her delicate bones, and I stopped, my brow furrowed as her nails bit into my flesh. She was pointing, and I peered down into the dark square. A figure was moving through the shadows, exiting a narrow stairway between two buildings and scurrying toward the great beast. There was something about the way he moved. I could not say what it was, but he appeared to be neither drunken reveler nor inquisitive local. There was something shady about him. I watched with growing apprehension. A thought struck me, and my eyes slipped back to that stairway, tracing its course behind buildings all the way to the tower above the Scaean Gate. A burgeoning golden glow rose from the parapet. That was no simple torch burning through the darkness like those to be found here and there around the walls. It was a beacon, high and bright. My skin prickled with dread, and I truly wished I’d bothered fetching my sword and sea-colored plumes. What could a beacon do? What could a horse do? What could one peasant do?

  My eyes dropped to the square again. The figure disappeared beneath the horse, and just for a moment I wondered whether Cassandra’s otherworldly ambiance and dark words were making me fear things that were not there. Perhaps this was just a drunken youth climbing up to ride the great horse. But after several heartbeats, he still did not appear atop the beast, and I knew that was not the case. He was hidden from sight somewhere beneath, but there was an odd wooden clonk, and suddenly he dropped from its belly back to the stone flags of the square. He was not alone. My eyes widened. Man after man dropped from underneath that horse like excrement fouling our city. I heard Cassandra’s sudden intake of breath and nodded, but she was not looking at the men emerging from the great wooden beast. Her eyes were higher, looking out from our lofty viewpoint over the walls at the horizon. I tore my gaze from the men to focus on what she had seen, and my heart pounded.

  Ships! A great number of ships, spotted across the moonlit sea like a black infection. The Achaean fleet was racing back toward our shores in the darkness, barely noticeable in the night, yet my eyes have always been keener than other men’s—another gift from my mother, who sees clearly into the darkest place of all: the hearts of men. I saw with her keenness those dark hulls that were mere specks on a dark sea and cursed because I should have known that the hubris of High King Agamemnon would never allow him to return to his home without finishing what he started. Without avenging the many hundreds he had lost. Without Helen.

  My voice rose in cries of warning, and Cassandra’s, too, but they were just two voices in a city of drunken revelers. Those who were awake could not hear us over their own din; those asleep were dulled by wine. I tensed and made to rush for the long staircase down into the square, but Cassandra simply held on to my wrist and shook her head with sad, haunted eyes. There were ten men down there now, Achaeans equipped for war. I thought I recognized Odysseus and King Menelaus of Sparta and that vicious runt son of Achilles named Neoptolemus, all with their war gear. Even the grizzled, limping Prince Philoctetes of Meliboea, who came last from the horse, could have taken me down with ease, for I was in a light kilt and entirely unarmed. Facing them now would be futile and would help no one, and Cassandra and I both knew it. While those ten men ran for the gate, preparing to open it to the Achaean flood, my cousin continued to howl her warnings, as unheeded now in our moment of dire peril as she had been in our moments of joy.

  “Stop them!” she cried to any Trojan who would listen, tearing at her hair while tears poured down her sunken cheeks. “Save your city, your fools, lest you feed the carrion come dawn!”

  She may as well have shouted at the sun not to rise.

  I determined to race to the tower and grab a sword—there would be weapons there, surely? Then I could hopefully reach the gate and face the invaders, maybe even stop them letting in their allies while Cassandra raised the alarm. I ran.

  Perhaps I slipped and fell in the darkness between high house walls. It was possible since I was barefoot and not every path was dry and clean. Certainly, my world seemed suddenly to spin sickeningly, and everything went black. As I opened my eyes again, Hector stood before me in all his gory splendor, blocking my path. Could a man run through a ghost, I wondered? I had no wish to find out, in truth, and I was floundering on the ground, blinking away the darkness.

  “Flee, son of Anchises,” Hector said, his mouth opening and closing as his torn throat flapped and rippled. I simply shook my head in disbelief, and when I blinked, Hector had gone. I slumped, dispirited and weary, and blackness overcame me.

  Fingers crawled across my skin, grasping at me. I blinked back into the world suddenly, shocked, and almost broke Cassandra’s neck before I realized it was her that was shaking me, her face full of concern. I looked about, confused.

  “Hector. Where is Hector?”

  Any other in Troy would have thought me deranged, but Cassandra knew what I knew, and she accepted it without comment. “What did he tell you?”

  “He told me to flee,�
�� I said with distaste, choking even on the idea.

  She nodded again, her voice strangely calm despite the tear-salt on her cheeks. We had failed to raise the alarm. “Then you must go, Cousin.”

  Around me, I could hear the sounds of a city embroiled in desperate battle, which shocked me alert. Desperate shouts and the ring of bronze on bronze rose from the square. How long had the darkness claimed me? Oh noble Hector, had you kept me from my doom only to condemn the whole city?

  The sounds of reveling had gone, and now there were cries of terror and panic and anger, shrieks of those falling beneath Achaean swords and hopefully a few Trojan ones. I floundered for only a moment before resolution filled me. I could do nothing unarmed. I needed to return home and equip myself. There, eight Dardanian warriors of my household were quartered in the lower rooms, and they would not be drunk. I did not approve of such base pleasures in my house when I myself would not indulge. Nine more blades could be raised in defense of the city if I hurried, and even nine blades can turn the tide in a battle.

  “Come with me,” I said, expecting that Cassandra would be grateful to do so, but expectations were ever to be cast aside when dealing with my cousin, and instead she shook her head sadly.

  “It is not my path, Aeneas. Tyche has no hold on my future—only the Fates, and they have decreed a lonely end for me.”

  I felt that thrill of closeness to the divine, like artful fire crackling across my flesh, once more at such certainty, but my pride was upon me now, and I could not allow myself to accept such a thing. “Cassandra, come. I can save you. You need not walk into destiny willingly.”

  I don’t know where that came from—it was not a common thread of thought for me.

  Cassandra gave a strangled laugh. “I have been anything but willing when it comes to accepting this night’s destiny. Now I am only resigned.” My cousin’s strange smile remained, and she gripped my shoulder for a long moment. “Dearest Aeneas, you cannot save me. You will try, and you will fail, for I have seen the path of my life laid out before me like a banquet table of rotting food. Indeed, you will not be able to save any upon whom you set your sights, and those whom you do save will come to you unexpected. Do not mourn for me, cousin, for I shall see you once more this night. Watch for the sign, Aeneas... a sign from the gods. You will know what to do.”

  I shivered, but already she had released my shoulder and was walking toward the din of battle. I fought a brief war with myself over whether to follow her, but she paused as if hearing my thoughts and held up her palms to halt me.

  Or perhaps in surrender.

  Cassandra was ever one to pursue her own destiny, so I cast a sad look after her and then rose and raced by the most direct route back to my house, ignoring the filth of the alleys underfoot, swift, though being careful not to slip again. I could ill afford to spend another moment in the blackness. As I reached the higher places, I looked about. Troy was already aflame, in the lower city, at least. I could see a house of my cousin Prince Deiphobus burning and wondered rather harshly whether Helen, who was now his by marriage after Paris was killed, might be burning inside it for all she had done. But divine justice is never that neat. The house of Priam’s closest advisor similarly burned, as did the homes of numerous lesser folk. The Achaean ships were surely all ashore now, and the streets of the lower city were packed with warriors, hungry invaders filled with battle madness and desperate Trojans trying to hold back a tide of the worst of humanity.

  My own house was in uproar, though my relief at finding it unassailed was paramount. Creusa stood in the common room in her white skirt, naked from the waist, her expression weighted with worry, our son wide-eyed and wary nearby. My father was already fully dressed and shouting orders to our Dardanian warriors. The eight of them were busy arming, each with a shirt of scales reinforced by bronze shoulder plates. Each bore a spear in hand, a sword at their side, and a moon-shaped shield of ox-hide with metal plates. Their helms were horned and of gleaming bronze. Ten years of depredation had damaged almost everything, but a true warrior never lets his armor dull.

  As I burst in through the door, Creusa ran over, with our son close behind, and threw her arms about me. I embraced her warmly but quickly let her go once more. This was no time for such pleasantry.

  “How is it?” one of the warriors asked quietly as my father grunted, “They took the gate?”

  I nodded to both. “It is bad. As yet, I think the invaders are caught up in the lower city and the citadel is untouched, but the upper city is unlikely to hold for long unless we do something.”

  I paused in my account to crouch and lace my bronze greaves, and as I straightened again, I held my arms out to the side while two men fitted my bronze breast and back plates and secured them.

  “All we can hope to do now is hold the high city and keep them from the sacred places. We can safely reach the upper walls ahead of the fighting, I think.” It was effectively suicide, of course, since I knew we could never hold the Achaean mass for long now that they were in the city, but I did not speak of it in that manner in front of my son.

  I reached down for my helm with its proud plumes the color of a summer sea and shook my head sadly at them. Their glorious color seemed to mock me.

  “If we go now—”

  The door to the house slammed open once more, and we all turned, hands leaping to the hilts of weapons, to see old one-eyed Chryses standing in the doorway, heaving in deep, exhausted breaths. Three figures hovered behind him: his pregnant daughter, Chryseis, also panting, and two boys with their arms full, one with a golden kithara lyre, the other a delicate gilded wreath of laurels. Chryses was the priest of Istanu, who the hated Achaeans call Apollo, an advisor to the king and a close friend of my father.

  “Aeneas,” he said, spotting me in my war ensemble long before old Anchises in the corner. “Troy falls.”

  I shook my head defiantly—see how even then hubris flooded through me? “Troy will prevail. We go to save the high places.”

  Chryses stared at me with his one good eye as though I were an idiot. “Aeneas, we must save what we can. I bring the relics from the temple, and we must take them to safety. Would that I could have reached the palace and retrieved the likenesses of the ancestor gods, but at least Apollo’s relics can be preserved.”

  I tried not to look at Creusa, who stood comforting the priest’s weeping daughter. I knew her face would urge me to run. She was a proud Trojan, like me, and would never say as much, but I knew that in her heart she wished I would take old Chryses, our young son, and everyone I cared about and usher them away from here, to safety. The memory of awful, ravaged Hector drifted through my mind, urging me to flee. It seemed the world around me and the world beyond both wished me to leave Troy. But how could I? How could I leave good men and women to die under the blades of the Achaeans while I tucked my tail between my legs and ran for the hills?

  “The city is at war. The Achaeans are both inside and outside our walls. Our Dardanian palace by the sea is but a shell, as is almost every Trojan tributary. This is the only home we have left. Where would we go?”

  It was, I thought, a convincing speech. Hoary Chryses, though, waved his hands about, his face desperate. “They cannot take the sacred relics, Aeneas. We must get them away.” He lowered his voice and leaned close in a conspiratorial manner. “Aeneas, you know where the remaining Trojan ships are. The last three vessels from our fleet, the ones that carried that bitch Helen here from Sparta—you hid them for Priam, on his orders. And three vessels can carry a lot of men.”

  I straightened with a frown. “While there is still a Troy to save, I have to save it,” I said with an air of finality. I do not know even now whether it was pride that drove me to turn my back on the notion of flight, or whether it was the call to duty that every warrior feels, for I suffer from both in equal measure. All I do know, as I look back on that decision, is that it was made in defiance of the urging of both men and gods, against the weaving of the Fates, and it brou
ght us only more pain.

  2 - DUTY

  I look about me. The oar benches are filled, though not one wooden blade dips in the water. There is little more than a faint breath of wind, yet we let the combination of our limp sail and the upper current carry us from the burning city, for we dare not risk the splash of oars drawing the attention of any scattered Achaeans who might be about. For we are Troy. We twenty-seven men are Troy. Each man sits silent, lost in his own thoughts as he watches the flames reflected in the calm waters. None of us can look back at the city now.

  We are all fathers and sons, heroes and cowards, teachers and students, but we are each, above and beyond all else, warriors. No matter how lost a cause might seem, when that cause chooses a warrior, he can do naught but accept his destiny and fight for it. Of course, sometimes the Fates have other futures in mind for us, and when that happens, we find ourselves torn.

  We armed. And while my father and Chryses discussed in quiet voices the necessity to preserve the sacred items, I stared at the beautiful plumes of my helmet that I had always worn with pride, marking myself as god-born, the son of Ishara. Somehow, with the city burning and the enemy within our gates, such pride seemed a bitter thing. It had brought us all low.

  Snarling, I grasped the beautiful plumes and wrenched them from the holders in the helmet, casting them to the floor. I had not realized until I stood, staring at the bald bronze bowl, that all other movement and conversation in the room had halted and everyone was watching me.

  “I am god-born, but today I am ashamed,” I snapped. My son scurried across the floor and began to gather up the beautiful plumes, but I ignored him. Instead, I grasped an old brush that hung from a hook on the wall, used for sweeping the surfaces in the house. Gritting my teeth, I wrenched the black, filthy bristles from the brush and knotted them carelessly into shape, jamming them into my plume holders. They jutted from my bronze helm higher than the beautiful ones had, stark, filthy, and dark. I tipped the helmet upside down so that the few that were not secure could tip out, then jammed it onto my head.