A Song of War: a novel of Troy

by Kate Quinn

  I paused as my son walked solemnly toward me, holding out his hands. In them were the sea-colored plumes I had cast aside at the beginning of this dreadful night.

  “We will watch for your colors, born of the sea, Father. We will not leave without them.”

  And once more I felt pride, though this was not the hubris that had brought our world low, but the righteous pride of a father in his son. I embraced my son, grasped my father by the upper arms, then turned and left without another word.

  I could not save Creusa, and I knew it. But I still had to try.

  4 – LOSS AND DISCOVERY

  The first hints of dawn are now lighting the deep blue above the darkened hills of the peninsula, somehow lessening the flames that still burn as they have all night. Now, as the light begins to grow, the fires of destruction seem to be diminished, but the tall columns of black smoke that, like tomb markers, indicate the passing of a world are beginning to show. We have emerged from the strait now, and the craggy isle of Imbros looms great and black to the northwest. We are not sure for where we are bound, but the matter of initial importance was to escape from Troy, and the proximity of Imbros confirms that we have achieved that goal. Soon the flames of the city will be lost to us altogether, and even the smoke will have faded into the horizon. Once that happens, the city is truly gone for us. Not Troy, though. Troy was more than a city. Just its shell is lost.

  It matters not, for we have made our peace and done our part. It is time to finally let go of the past and look to the future, and, oddly, it took an Achaean to make me truly realize that.

  I ran through the dusty brown countryside once more, filled with hopeless urgency. I was, I will admit, not entirely in my right mind. I had lived through—endured—the end of my world, the burning of my city, the death of so many friends, including the king and numerous cousins. Yet to have Creusa so cruelly ripped from me was enough to send me grief-mad. I recognize now that I was maddened. I was snarling and shouting imprecations against the Achaeans even as I ran through the wilderness despite the danger in which such behavior could place me.

  All the way back through the ruined farms, I growled and snarled and shouted, occasionally bursting into fits of calling my wife’s name in the hope she might just be lost among the scrub. Between the gnarled olive trunks I hurtled and up the slope to the gate from which we had emerged, still standing ajar as we’d left it. I had no plan. A man in grief-madness cannot plan. Everything that happens is triggered by unhappy accident or momentary fits of mental illumination. It takes something unexpected to snap him out of it.

  I ran through the city without knowing where I was going until I rounded the corner and saw my house atop the next rise. Three Achaeans were on the balcony, and smoke was already rising from the roof. I pictured Creusa inside choking and panicking and ripped my sword from my scabbard as I ran. The three men had looted my house, finding, I suspected, little of interest. I lived a generally ascetic life, after all. Having scoured the rooms of my home, they had brought their flaming brands to it. I cared not. A house is just a shell, and I had already lost the one at Dardania when the Achaeans arrived and we went to Troy. But the very possibility that Creusa could be in there...

  I bounded up the steps three at a time, sword in hand. My blade was of good Hittite bronze but western design: strong, long, heavy, with a wicked point and two very sharp edges. It was the perfect killing device for almost any circumstance, and I used it well. The Achaeans heard nothing, as they were joking and laughing with one another, and that, added to the spit and crackle of timber-fed flames, drowned out my pounding sandaled feet. My sword took the first invader in the throat, smashing through his teeth, sinking into his brain and grating against the inside of his skull for a jarring moment until I ripped it back out, spun like a dancer, and bit two hand-widths deep into the next man’s chest, cleaving lung and heart and shattering ribs. Both men had fallen, spilling out gore, before the third even knew I was on him. He tried to defend himself, but he was too late. I rammed the tip into his gut, wrenching it back out with a twist and leaving him to groan as I ran inside.

  The house had begun to burn properly now. I searched every room, leaping aside as blazing beams fell and clouds of sparks engulfed me like dancing fireflies. I shielded my sore eyes from the terrible heat as I searched each chamber, coughing in the roiling black smoke. Creusa was not there. Why had I expected her to be? I was wasting time here. Bursting back out onto the balcony, I spotted the man I had gut-wounded sitting on the floor, clutching his belly-ropes in horror. His friends were both past the last river now, cold and still. The madness was still on me, though, and I placed the tip of my sword on the thigh of the seated warrior, just above the knee.

  “What did you do with all the slaves?” I snarled at him. “The ones captured as they fled the city!”

  He seemed barely aware I was there, such was the horrible fascination he had for his spilled innards. I pressed down on the sword, and it cut through his leg muscles, scarring the bone until it touched the stones below. He screamed. I had his attention now, so I pulled the sword back out and placed the tip very gently in the same place on his other leg.

  “Where are the slaves?”

  He looked up at me, and I suddenly realized how young he was. He could barely be called a warrior, really—not much older than my own son. Normally, I would abhor such torture. In any ordinary world, I would have beaten a man for doing what I had just done, but I will claim only that grief-madness was driving me. The youth whimpered. “The citadel.” He pointed up the hill, and more of his gut-ropes escaped with the movement. He shrieked and grasped them again. I nodded.

  I ran on. I did not administer a mercy kill as I should have. Grief-madness, again. Clearly, it was madness, for the city crawled with victorious Achaean warriors, and I walked through it as though I were a Titan, not bothering to hide my nationality. Perhaps it was the stolen lion pelt about my shoulders that saw me through. It certainly cannot have been my clearly Trojan arms and attire, or the smoke-darkened, sea-hued plumes rising from my helm. Many of the Achaeans were now leaving the high places. Some were spreading out into the lower city in the same way as the three I had killed, looting and burning whatever was yet untouched. Others were heading back out to their abandoned camp near the shore, carrying their slaves or their loot, or both. None of them gave me more than a passing glance as I moved through the city against the general flow of humanity.

  I stalked through their midst, and they often stepped out of my way rather than challenge me. No one challenged me. My sword was in my hand and still dripping blood as I stomped on up the steep street to the ruined inner gate for the second time that night. Gradually, as I ascended, the flow of people thinned out. I emerged into the open area of the citadel hardly troubled by other passersby, and took in the scene with a mix of desperate hope and saddened disgust. Heaps of looted goods lay piled around the square, enemy warriors sorting through them, just as our own had been sorting through the spoils from their ravaged camp less than a day ago. And here and there were lines of dejected captives, stripped of all but their essential clothes, their smoke-stained faces cast down hopelessly to the ground. Around them, groups of Achaean warriors moved, gathering, organizing, roping.

  I noticed two commanders deep in conversation near the center, seemingly in charge of this process, and I knew them both. Philoctetes of Meliboea, the gray-bearded archer who had cut down that foul coward Paris, and ever-present Odysseus. As I say, the madness was upon me, and I stormed into the heart of that gathering as though I owned the square. I am not sure whether the two Achaean heroes saw me at first as I pushed their warriors out of the way angrily and ran in among the lines of slaves, yelling my wife’s name over and over, grasping at shoulders and lifting heads to look into faces, fighting despair and hoping that one of these poor wretches would be her. Again and again I spun amid this tableau of human misery, peering into hollow eyes and pulling aside emaciated and ravaged bodies. And suddenly she wa
s there!

  I was staring into Creusa’s face. I leaped toward her, but my arms were held. I turned back and struggled, but two Achaean warriors now held me tight, and as I watched Creusa among those sad lines, I realized that what I was seeing was impossible. My wife was so pale as to outshine the moon. So unbelievably pale. And the line across her throat was wide and dark and clotted where already all her lifeblood had flowed out, much of it crusted on her neck and chest. She was dead. I was looking into my Creusa’s eyes, but she was dead. And she shook her head with an air of finality, as though trying to confirm her demise for me. I heard someone shout my name, and my head snapped round reflexively. I could not see who had called, and when I looked forward once more, Creusa was gone. In her place was a pale woman about her age with a slave-rope around her neck.

  “Aeneas, son of Anchises,” called that voice again.

  I was stunned. Creusa had been there, and dead, but not there at all, and this had been no dream. Slowly, still trying to make sense of it all, I turned my head, and a new feeling began deep in my heart. Rage.

  Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, stood in the open space, a long spear in his hands and a cruel grin on his face. The rage burned up like the inferno in my house, searing my chest, scoring my throat, and filling my mind and mouth with burning, blazing fury.

  I went for the vicious prick.

  All the anger I experienced at what had happened since night fell on my city and brought with it doom, at the treatment of my people by these arrogant invaders, at the Fates for allowing such things, at myself for not being able to do more, at the loss of Creusa... it all combined into a shining diamond of hate directed at this boy who embodied all I found most vile in the Achaeans.

  My sudden rage was so thorough and unexpected that the two men gripping my arms were taken by surprise, and I ripped free of their grasp. I still had my sword in hand, and before they knew what was happening, I was swinging and lunging, swiping and stabbing at the rancorous son of Achilles. I will give him his due: not only was he not afraid, but he was also quick and skillful. Given my sudden onslaught, many a warrior would have been dead in a heartbeat, but Neoptolemus raised his spear to block me, which snapped it in two but robbed my first true killing blow of much of its force.

  He danced out of the way, using the two halves of his spear as sword and staff, jabbing with the bronze leaf-point as he swung and swiped with the shaft in his other hand, striking low, trying to take my legs out from under me. In actual fact, he hit me there more than once, and had I been in a normal state, I might well have gone down. But I was in grief-rage now rather than grief-madness. The Achaeans call it the Rage of Ares—their war god. We Trojans know that it is all the province of man, for the gods do not have to gift us madness. We make it for ourselves.

  I barely felt the bruising of my legs that almost broke bones. Instead, I tried my hardest to kill the cruel animal. My second true killing blow also failed, for suddenly those two Achaean warriors were on me again, trying to restrain me. Even as I fought them off, Neoptolemus snarled at them to stay out of it, and from the corner of my eye, I saw Odysseus motion for them to step back.

  We circled like stags in the rutting season, each watching the other’s eyes for a sign of movement. Slowly, as we did so, the son of Achilles threw away one piece of spear, drew his sword, and then cast the other stick aside. Still we circled, and with each cycle, the gods slowly drained my rage and replaced it with determination.

  Neoptolemus was good. His eyes betrayed nothing, and I was lucky to see the muscles in his leg ripple as he put his weight into the left. I spun even as he lunged, dropping to the side out of danger. I tried to strike out at him as we passed, but gods, he was quick. We circled again, this time even more warily. Again I watched, and again there was no tell of his plan. He leaped, swinging his sword, and I brought mine up only in the last moment, barely deflecting the blow. My reply almost took his leg off, but that quick, short blade of his dropped ridiculously fast and turned aside my own blow. We danced again.

  “I’ve not seen anyone hold Neoptolemus off so well before,” Philoctetes said casually nearby to the captain of the Myrmidons. The man nodded, and Odysseus gave a noncommittal grunt.

  The son of Achilles was watching me carefully. I did not think he would be the first to strike next time. I had come close to wounding him badly with that last blow. Now he watched, waiting for me to move. I wondered how arrogant he was. He had surely no more than fifteen years, big and fast as he was, and boys are always cocksure. Breathing steadily, I flicked my glance to his left for just the blink of an eye and then swept to his right. As I predicted, he could not believe I would be sharper than he, and while I leaped, he swung his sword in a block at entirely the wrong side. As he flailed, I slashed at his side and felt the blade tear through his corselet’s leather and the bronze scales attached to it. I did not draw blood, but I know that sort of wound, and I had left the sort of bruise that covers half the torso and takes weeks to heal. I likely broke a rib or two as well.

  He twisted away, hissing in pain and clutching his side with his free hand, and I almost missed his riposte, which could easily have ended me. I dropped at the last moment, barely seeing the lunge coming, and the blade raked across the top of my shoulder, drawing blood down to white bone and narrowly missing the cord that connects a man’s neck.

  The gods were protecting me. But then, they were protecting him, too. I was the son of Ishara, but he was the grandson of Thetis, and we could neither of us consider ourselves untouchable. We watched one another like wary wolves around a carcass in a hungry winter. To his credit, and most unexpectedly as far as I was concerned, he did not boast. Perhaps he did not need to. His heritage did his boasting for him.

  He came suddenly once more, and I met his blows with my sword again and again, the repeated ring of bronze on bronze like the tolling of a sanctuary offering bell rung by an overeager priest. We hammered at one another now, finesse forgotten, swords smashing and swiping, stabbing and slashing, each time caught by the other. The dance of bronze became frantic, and we twisted and turned, ducked and leaped, each determined to kill with every stroke.

  At the climax of this play of skill, we both struck. I was the lucky one. My sword bit into his leg. Most of the force was taken by his bronze greave, but I cut a deep gash in the calf that would leave a lifelong weakness there. His blow struck me on my white-plumed helm. Had it been a finger-width lower, I would have been searching for my head. As it was, it struck the short neck guard and the cheek piece, the latter crumpling painfully into my cheek.

  I went temporarily deaf with the noise of the bronze helmet taking the strike, but the reverberation caught Neoptolemus, too, by surprise, and even as he stumbled and fell backward from my leg strike, he lost his grip on his sword, which clattered away across the ground, raising a shower of dust. My head ringing with an echoing bronze chime, my brains addled and shaken, still I managed to step forward, raising my sword, ready to end the son of Achilles once and for all.

  I could have delivered the killing stroke, even with my brains spinning in their case. But as I stumbled forward, someone tore my helmet from my head and rapped me smartly on the skull, sending me into dark oblivion.

  I was not out for long. I knew it because my head was still spinning a little as I woke.

  The room was dark, lit only by the orange glow of the ever-present flames through the windows and open doorway. I was seated against a wall, a blanket behind my head and another across my lap. I was still dressed, and, oddly, my dented helmet and sword were close by, the latter cleaned and sheathed by some unknown hand.

  “I must apologize, Aeneas, son of Anchises,” said a sympathetic and soothing voice. “I know that Achilles’ son is an insufferable arse, but he is also the child of our greatest hero, and something of a symbol of victory to the entire army.”

  My eyes gradually accustomed themselves, and the crouched form of Odysseus swam into focus. Strangely, I remembered how he had crouche
d to string his bow at the archery contest in Sparta during his wedding, when the two of us had become friends and I had been cheering his victory against vain, strutting Paris. That had been ten years ago, and we had both been younger men—men without lines of grief on our faces and threads of gray in our hair—but somehow that sunlit image seemed closer to me than anything else in the long bloody decade between that moment and this one.

  “I couldn’t let you kill him there, though I will admit to having wished I’d done just that once or twice over these past days. But it is done now, Aeneas. Killing Neoptolemus would resolve nothing. If anything, it could lead to further atrocities, and now is the time to end the killing, not renew it.”

  The Ithacan king, possibly the only man in the entire Achaean army whom I held in esteem, smiled sadly. “I wanted to end it all without such bloodshed. I hope you know that. I may have been instrumental in this horror, but that was never my wish. I wanted to come to a word-wise solution for Menelaus’ wife. And even after all those years of war, we might just have done so. When Paris died, she could have been returned. I suspect she never wanted to, but it would not be her say. And yet King Priam went and married her off to another of his sons. When he did that, he doomed Troy, and there was nothing else I could do but bend my efforts instead to being the victor.”

  “I saw Helen,” I said, my voice hollow. “On the citadel, hiding from friend and foe alike—the most despised woman in the world. I almost put a sword through her then. Maybe I should have, but it is perhaps more fitting that I leave her for her husband to gut. She has been found, I presume?’

  Odysseus snorted, though there was no humor in the sound, and his eyes were flinty cold. “You could say that. One glimpse of her naked and the old goat took her back before she tripped over his tongue.”