“Briseis, how bad is it out there?”
“The fires are spreading. I don’t think we can stay here much longer.”
“Then we should get these men ready if we can. This man has a sword cut in his calf. As long as he lies still, the bleeding has stopped. Without linen bandages, I left it unbound.” She peered at the long gash and pulled her supply of linen out—at least she could offer that even if she weren’t skilled at closing it up. They’d need to bind him up before he could move.
The man lying on his stomach turned his head and smiled gamely at her. “Lady Briseis, it’s no great cut.” The cut extended the length of his calf and must have hurt terribly, but she appreciated the man’s spirit. As Iatros bound the wound, he needed a second pair of hands. Working side by side comforted Briseis. Iatros taught her how to tie the linen in a crossing pattern to hold it tight against the leg.
She glanced up when she heard someone at the door softly call out the guards’ greeting. One of the men unbarred the door and helped an injured man as he slumped against the wall by the door. Iatros went over to see to his bloody arm and shoulder.
She went to another of the men lying on a worktable. His face was white, eyes staring. She leaned close to check. He was gone.
She looked at his boyish face and felt a pang when she recognized him. She had gone with her mother when he fell out of a tree and broke his leg. The physician had set the leg, but the family wanted him restored to harmony with the gods, so Antiope had cast stones on the divining board and revealed he had offended Telipinu. Who had cut him down today—Achilles?
The man who had come in spoke up. “I don’t think it’s safe here. The fires are spreading rapidly, but I don’t know what we should do.” As if to emphasize his words, they heard a dull crash, sounding nearby even through the thick walls. She looked at Iatros. His body sagged.
Briseis looked past him. Could the wounded men walk? The men with the chest wound and injured leg should be carried on litters, but they’d never get through the debris with litters. She jumped at another crash of collapsing buildings close by.
She turned to Iatros. “We’ll aim for the Stag Gate. By now perhaps the Greeks have abandoned that part of the city. Tie linen over your noses and mouths to keep out the ash. Is there any wood for walking sticks to support the wounded?” Iatros cut lengths of bandage for each of them. The others stirred into action.
She knelt close to the man with the calf wound and asked softly, “Do you think you can walk?”
“It’s that or burn to death, isn’t it? Only a leg wound. Who needs a leg to walk?” He gave her a wry smile. “You look to the others, Lady Briseis. Give me a stick to hobble on, and I’ll be as fine as you are.” He tipped his chin at her bloody cheek and head.
“You’re a brave man.”
Iatros helped the man with the bandaged chest get to his feet, although from her brother’s shaky movements, his own strength seemed drained. One of the guards came from the back rooms with a stout pole. Bits of wool were tied to one end. He must have broken it off a loom. She thought of her own loom with the tapestry of medicinal plants on it, almost finished—probably in flames by now.
The skin by Iatros’s left eye twitched and the lively warmth of his eyes had worn to a deadened blear. Mama, she prayed, I don’t think the gods care what happens to us anymore, so you must watch over us, your only remaining children. Bring us safely from this burning city to the mountain pastures, which have nurtured our flocks and are now our only shelter.
They gathered by the door and a guard pulled it open. Ash rained down and smoke assailed them. The linen masks created weird disfigurements as if the men had lost their mouths.
They stumbled along the narrow lane, but when they came to the main road where they should have turned toward the far side of the city, flames and unbearable heat sidetracked them, forcing them back toward the marketplace. She thought they would still be able to reach the Stag Gate, but they would have to climb up the palace hill and go down the back way. With the Greeks gathering their loot at the Great Gate, she could think of no other choice.
The man with the chest wound struggled and his pace was slowest, even with Iatros and another man supporting him. Briseis stayed next to her brother.
She wondered, as they started up the hill, if the palace remained intact. With all the smoke, she could not see the top, but as they ascended, the sound of the firestorm lessened and the air became more breathable. She hoped the Greeks had finished pillaging.
As they climbed, she listened to the heavy breathing of the man with the calf injury a few steps in front of her. Next to her Iatros stopped. Blood dribbled through the linen covering the mouth of the man with the chest injury. Iatros and the guardsman caught the man as he collapsed. Why had they thought this man could walk?
They would have to make a litter. She saw a nearby gate ajar, opening into the courtyard of a large home.
“Let’s bring him in here.” She helped her brother and the other two guardsmen carry the injured man inside. They laid him by the well.
“We’ll need something to make a litter,” Iatros said.
Briseis pulled off her cloak. “If you can find some stakes to tie my cloak to, that should work.” The men scattered to search the stable and storerooms that opened onto the courtyard. The man with the calf injury started to limp away. She stopped him. “Rest now.” He lowered himself onto the low wall surrounding the well.
She drew some water and Iatros washed the face and mouth of the man with the chest injury. His eyes were closed, but he breathed. She turned toward the gate.
“We should close the gate so no Greeks will find—” She stopped. A shadow had fallen across the opening.
The guardsman sitting on the well drew his sword. Iatros pushed her down so she was hidden behind the well and drew his sword. She heard the sounds as bronze-nailed footsteps rushed. Swords clashed. A man fell.
Then a voice called out in Greek, “Lord Achilles, come over—” There was a grunt, a thud. The voice fell silent. A Greek warrior lay against the well. His hand loosened its grip on his sword.
She lifted her head to see over the well. Iatros stared at his bloody sword and the dead Greek. The man with the leg wound was on the ground, his sword arm still outstretched, but his innards poured out onto the hard dirt.
Other guardsmen came out of the stables, but it did not matter, for the gate filled with a huge form, and Achilles plunged toward Iatros. Her brother lifted his sword to meet the oncoming stroke. A rage rose up in her; the sound of a hundred bees filled her head. In one motion she swept the dead Greek’s sword off the ground and leapt from behind the well. Achilles’ blade flashed in the air above her. She saw his hands grasping the hilt and sensed their power, then saw his look of astonishment as she raised her blade against the blow aimed at her brother. A new, invincible strength coursed through her arms. The desire to strike—raw and terrifying—drove out her helplessness. Her blade met his. A bolt shot through her, and she reeled from the force. Achilles jerked his chest backwards even as the momentum of his swing carried him forward. Achilles’ sword cut through the unprotected joint of her brother’s armor between the neck and shoulder. Iatros’s head fell to the side. As the weight of Iatros’s body carried her to the ground, she heard an anguished cry and could not tell if it was hers or Achilles’.
Chapter Eighteen
Wandering in the Shadows of Death
The Greeks built their base camp near the burnt-out city, in a wide space where a storm had washed out the sloping banks of the stream. The place felt raw—exposed soil and boulders—a wound in the landscape, despite the trees that had withstood the onslaught. A dozen or so injured soldiers rested near the main fire pit. The mild spring weather made caring for the injured in the open air workable. When the other thirty or so men weren’t loading wagons with the spoils from Lyrnessos to haul to their ships, they ate or rolled out their blankets near the fire.
The women formed a group apart and
had their own cook fire. Many captive women had already been taken down to the ships. Among the women still here, only Briseis could not rise from her makeshift bed.
She heard sounds, voices maybe, but the effort of listening seemed too great. If she could open her eyes and look—but that was too hard. She drifted.
“My Poppy. Oh my stars and fishes. Come back to me, my little Poppy.”
Eurome. She heard Eurome’s voice. Relief pulled her from the darkness. She opened her eyes. Eurome cried out in delight. Briseis attempted a smile and reached toward her nurse, but the pain struck as soon as she lifted her head. She raised Eurome’s hand to her lips and kissed the worn palm. One dear person left to her, so dear. Everyone else gone.
Tears ran down Eurome’s cheeks. “Thank the gods, you’re awake, but lie quiet now, my girl. That Achilles said you must rest. He made a drink I’m to get into you, but I couldn’t see how with you lying almost dead like that. Thank the gods, you’re back.”
Briseis drifted into the darkness.
The smell of smoke. Her eyes flew open in panic. Her body lifted in fear, but it was only a cook fire. Briseis heard the familiar slap of hands making flatbread and saw Eurome throwing dough onto a stone set on the coals. Another woman pulled the baked breads off with tongs. Other women gazed empty-eyed into the fire, their cheeks scratched from grieving and their hair gray with ashes they had thrown on their heads.
She turned slightly to study the activity around the men’s fire pit. She didn’t see Achilles anywhere. Patroklos knelt by a pallet and helped one of the injured men drink from a cup, then quietly went from one to another, attending their needs. His gentle movements gave healing. He had a round, open face framed by brown wavy hair tied back with a strip of leather. His limbs had a compact agility completely different from Achilles’ flowing strength.
How wrong Mynes had been about this man. In contrast to Achilles’ explosive nature, Patroklos brought a soothing calm with him as he worked. Achilles had no need for Patroklos’s protection in battle. The peace Patroklos offered formed the bond between them. She knew that from watching him. Just as she had sensed in her dreams, just as Telipinu yearned for a calm he could not achieve by himself, so all the tales about Achilles said he hungered for cooling water—Patroklos. She had loved Telipinu for this vulnerability, a god who needed her. Achilles was not a god though, but a killer.
A soldier approached the women’s fire. He glanced at the women with their hollow looks and turned to Eurome, who must have taken on the role of communicating for the other women, not all of whom knew Greek. “Thank you. Fresh bread is a welcome luxury to men who’ve been sailing and fighting.”
Eurome glared at him. “Then you should ha’ stayed home where you can get your bread easy.” Her hand supported her back as she straightened slowly and walked away from him. Briseis appreciated Eurome’s retort, but she felt alarm at how the soldier might react.
He grabbed Eurome’s shoulder. “You’ve a sharp tongue, old woman. You remind me of my old nurse, so I’ll let you be. You’ve got the spark of life left in you. If you can help the others to come through this—their husbands are gone. The city’s burnt. There’s nothing left for them but to make the best of it as servants to a Greek lord.”
“Servants and bedmates, y’ mean. Why should I help ’em face that?”
“Because that’s all there is for them, unless you would rather leave them dead in the streets. You’ve been a servant all your life, I imagine, or taken slave early on, and you know well enough it’s not all sorrow and grief.”
Eurome shrugged. “They don’t want to hear no such things now.”
The soldier turned away, carrying the basket of bread. Briseis looked around at the seven women sitting on the ground near the fire. They slumped in torn, dirty clothes. Most of them hadn’t looked up as the soldier came near. They’d lost interest in what fate still held for them.
Eurome returned to the circle around the fire. She sat next to a woman and took her hand.
Patroklos walked toward the group with a bowl of cheese. He stopped, and Briseis saw him glance at the top of the washed out riverbank. The late afternoon sun cast long shadows from the willows, oaks and tamarisks that grew by the stream. Dark fingers crept up the steep bank.
Patroklos looked intently down the path. Briseis found the place he watched. A flash of red-gold caught the sun’s rays. A moment later Achilles dipped into the shadows as he came down to the camp. The dagger in her head jabbed behind her eyes. She remembered Achilles standing on top of Lyrnessos’s fallen gate, his gold shield reflecting the morning light. By then he had already killed Mynes, Bienor, and Adamas. She wished she still had a sword.
He saw Patroklos and waved.
“How are the injured recovering?” The two men embraced.
Briseis studied Achilles. Even in the afternoon shadows he exuded a shimmer like sun on moving water. She did not trust her eyes. Despite the marvel, she hated him.
“Faster than we’d thought,” said Patroklos, “even with all the smoke they breathed in. It’s dangerous when a city catches fire so quickly. If we raid again, we’ll need to control the men.”
“You’re the one to teach control, not I. Let’s hope there’s no more raiding. I’ve done Agamemnon’s bidding enough. Men can’t fight without meat in their bellies and wine in their hearts, and that greedy heart-of-a-doe knows I’ll always provide for the men. For the gods’ sake let’s take Troy and be done with this.”
Achilles looked toward the women. His eyes fell on Briseis. Her breath seized. “How is she?”
“I don’t think she’s any better. Her nurse says she doesn’t eat or drink.”
Achilles walked toward her. As he drew closer, she saw the two leather satchels over his shoulder—hers and Iatros’s.
Eurome hurried to her side and let out a cry when she saw the satchels.
“You recognize these?” Achilles asked.
Eurome lost her voice. She stood frozen, her hands at her mouth.
Achilles crouched beside Briseis and extended the satchels to her. In spite of the racking pain whenever she moved, she reached for them, but when her hand brushed his, she recoiled as from a searing heat. The severing of Iatros’s neck flashed before her. She wanted the satchels desperately, but she wouldn’t take anything from this man’s hands.
Achilles’ sea-green eyes flared into flame. The muscles of his neck and arms contracted. He seemed suspended in the moment before action. A rushing sound of waves reverberated in Briseis’s head. Perhaps her vision faltered, because he wavered in and out of her sight like the ebb and flow of the sea. Then he leaned back on his heels and placed the satchels on the edge of her blanket.
“One of my soldiers saved these,” he said in a voice that held the same sounds of the sea and a storm restrained with struggle. “He stood by when—when you suffered injury, and he stole them, thinking they held treasures. He was disappointed at what he saw inside, but when they came to me, I saw their worth, though they did not shimmer.” A strip of linen bandage had come loose and trailed out of her satchel. He folded it into a neat square and placed it inside.
“How did they come to you?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
“The soldier brought them to me, suspecting I might want them because your fame is already well established among my men—they tell your tale over their wine cups at night like a warrior’s glory. I’m accustomed to their exaggerated stories of my deeds, but my sword knows your sheer courage, and that they cannot overstate.”
She gazed at the satchels in silence. She didn’t want his admiration.
He turned to Eurome. “Have you been giving her sips of the mixture I brought you this morning?”
“I’ve tried and tried, but she drunk no more than a drop each time. As you says this morning, her stomach is unsteady, though why a head wound causes that, I don’t follow, but I see it’s true.”
“Start with small sips. She’ll heal when she eats.” Briseis noted what she h
ad to do to get better. She would eat despite the nausea. “Work at it with patience, as I’m sure you’ve done many times before.”
Eurome nodded. “That I have, many a time since the day she was born.”
Achilles looked over at Briseis. He had moved away as he spoke to Eurome, and she felt able to breathe more freely now that he wasn’t so close. “These satchels hold healing supplies. You are a healer, and the man also? Is that why you leapt to his defense? Healers always share a close bond.”
Even from this distance her heart pounded when she saw his hands, the same hands on the hilt of the sword that had cut through her brother’s neck; the same hands from her dreams. She closed her eyes.
He spoke to Eurome. “Why did you cry out when you saw these satchels?”
“One of them is my lady’s. The other, her brother’s. The pain to see that one—” she meant Iatros’s “—and know....” She stopped.
Achilles waited.
“I knew he were gone when you says to me what my Briseis done with that sword. Who else would she ha’ done it for? But to see both of them satchels—” Eurome groaned. Briseis looked up.
The old woman wrapped her arms around her torso and swayed. “They weren’t never happier than working side by side. Lady Antiope, their mother, she were a great healer, and teaching Briseis since she were only a tiny girl. See here—” Eurome pointed to the embossed design on Briseis’s satchel. “The same pattern as her mama’s and Iatros’s too. They asked special for that to honor their mama.”
“I wish I had not caused his death,” said Achilles. “Healers are sacred to the gods, and if I had realized, I would not have struck. But he stole the life of one of my men, and my only satisfaction comes through vengeance. If Patroklos stood with me, he would have soothed my battle rage, as he always does, and I might not have acted so rashly. The lives a healer has saved tilt the scales in his defense. Indeed, when your lady mistress rose up like an avenging fury, I struggled to withdraw my blow, but that was not fated.”
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