[Troy 03] - Fall of Kings

by David

  Astyanax held up the net again for his father to inspect. “Good boy,” Helikaon told him. “Now, let’s go back to the camp and eat them.”

  The sky still was clouded with ash, and there was a constant light ashfall, leaving a grainy grayness on everything. Even the crew’s campfires had to be protected from the ashfall or they would go out quickly. As father and son passed the cairn of small rocks raised to mark the bones of their comrades, Helikaon saw that it now appeared as if carved from a single smooth stone.

  The Xanthos had survived all four of the great waves, each one smaller than the one before. After the brutal punishment of the first, Helikaon had not even tried to steer the ship. He just had held on grimly, one arm around the aft rail, one around Oniacus, who by then was unconscious. Yet gallantly the ship had plunged unerringly like a lance into each mountainous wave, as if steering herself. When the fourth wave had passed, Helikaon had gazed out over the sea. They had been swept into unknown waters. He had no idea where they were. He quickly untied himself and Oniacus, then raced down to the lower deck.

  He never would forget the awful sight that struck his eyes. Andromache hung, helpless and still, from the ropes she had tied to a rear rowing bench. Her face was pale, and her hair drifted like seaweed in the shallow water on the planks of the deck. She still held the boys in a viselike grip. Both were alive, but they were sodden and white-faced, silent with shock.

  Helikaon untied them, then picked Andromache up, dread in his heart. Her head lolled loosely, and her eyes were half-open, unseeing. He threw her down on the waterlogged deck, turning her to her stomach and pressing down on her back to try to expel the water. It seemed to make no difference. Her body was limp, unmoving. Crying out with anguish, he lifted her by the waist so that her head was down and shook her like a rag doll. At last she gave a faint sigh. Then water gushed out of her mouth, and she gave a weak cough. He shook her again, and more water gouted out. She started coughing harder and trying to struggle from his grip. He picked her up and pulled her tightly to him, tears of gratitude and relief falling down his cheeks.

  They had lost twenty-nine of the sixty-eight souls on board. Strangely, the one-armed veteran Agrios had survived, but the youngster Praxos had been swept away. Of the survivors, many were injured, and two died later that day.

  Helikaon had wrenched Oniacus’ dislocated shoulder back in place, tied it securely, and given the injured man the steering oar. Then he and Andromache had joined the uninjured crewmen to row the ship slowly through the ash-covered sea. It had been hard to see in the constant grayness, and Helikaon had despaired of finding a berth for the night when a darker shape had appeared out of the half-light.

  It was a small low island, much of it scoured clean by the waves. They could not beach the ship, for they did not have the manpower to launch it again. They dropped the stone anchors in the shallows and struggled to the beach as best they could. Exhausted, they all slept where they lay regardless of the waves lapping at their feet. In the morning Helikaon sent out men to look for fresh water. They quickly discovered a clear spring nearby, and for the first time since they had left Thera, Helikaon knew they were safe for a while.

  That night they recognized when sunset arrived only by the astonishing display of colors—bronze, red, and purple—in the darkened sky. Helikaon now knew which way was west, and he felt encouraged by the knowledge.

  The next day they held funeral rites for their comrades. With no beasts to kill for sacrifice, the men poured libations from the one surviving jug of wine to placate Poseidon, who had brought them to this place, and to Apollo, begging him to bring back the sun.

  As captain, Helikaon took part in the rites, but he walked away as soon as possible. He found the men’s simple devotion unfathomable and remembered a conversation he had had with Odysseus concerning the men’s faithfulness to such unreliable gods.

  “All seamen are superstitious, or pious in their devotion, however you see it,” the Ithakan king said. “They are constantly in peril, at the mercy of the wind and the treacherous sea. Giving names to the elements and treating them like living men with human emotions makes them feel they have control over events which would otherwise seem random and meaningless.

  “They are simple men and revere the gods as they revered their own fathers. When angry, their fathers could lash out at them and hurt them. When happy, they would feed them and keep them safe. So they try to keep the gods content, giving them food and wine and praising them, worshipping them. Do not sneer at their faith, Helikaon. We all need something to have faith in.”

  “You do not believe in the gods, Odysseus.”

  “I did not say that,” the older man replied. “I do not think the sun god Apollo drives his chariot across the sky each day like a slave tasked with a very dull chore, but it does not mean I do not believe. I have traveled all around the Great Green, and I have met men who worship the weather god of the Hittites, and Osiris, the Gypptos’ god of the dead, and the child devourer Molech, and the grim lonely god of the desert folk, but no nation of people seems more blessed than any other. Each has its triumphs and tragedies.”

  He thought for a while. “I believe there is a being beyond comprehension who guides our path and judges us. That is all I know.” He grinned and added, “And I fervently hope there is no Hall of Heroes where we must spend eternity supping with the blood-smeared Herakles and Alektruon.”

  On the gray beach in their still, twilight world, Helikaon gazed toward the east. He thought he could detect a breath of breeze, and the sky seemed to be lightening in that direction. He wondered if they ever would see a cloudless day or a starry night again.

  He smiled. Ahead of him he could see Andromache and Dex walking toward them along the shore. Even her dress of flame seemed diminished in the gray light.

  They met and stood facing each other. He put up his hand and brushed ash from her cheek. He looked into her gray-green eyes.

  “You are beautiful,” he told her. “How can you be so beautiful when covered with ash?”

  She smiled, then asked, “You walked to the headland again? Do you still hope to see the Bloodhawk?”

  He answered ruefully. “No, I do not. The ship is smaller than the Xanthos and was closer to Thera. I do not think it survived. But perhaps its crew did. Or some of them. Odysseus was a strong swimmer, although it was a long time before I found that out.” He smiled at the memory. “And he claimed he could float on his back all day, a goblet of wine balanced on his belly.”

  She laughed, and the air seemed to lighten at the sound. She looked up. “The sky is getting brighter, I think.”

  He nodded. “If the breeze picks up, we might sail today.”

  The main mast of the Xanthos had been swept away by the sea, along with the black horse sail, but there was a spare mast lying the length of the ship, and it had been raised in readiness. There were extra oars stored in the bowels of the galley and a new sail of plain linen. When the men had rolled it out and checked the sail for weaknesses or tears, Oniacus had asked him, “Will we paint the black horse of Dardanos on this one, Golden One?” Helikaon had shaken his head. “I think not.” We need a new symbol for the future, he had told himself.

  “But you do not know where we are. How can you know where we are going?” Andromache asked.

  “We will sail west. Eventually we will see familiar land.”

  “Perhaps we have been swept far beyond the known seas.”

  He shook his head. “In our terror, my love, the great waves seemed to last an eternity. But in truth, it was not very long. We cannot be far from the lands we know, but they might have been changed by the waves and be hard to recognize.”

  “Then we will still reach the Seven Hills by winter?”

  “I am sure we will,” he told her honestly. His heart lifted at the thought of the fledgling city where families from Troy and Dardanos were building their new lives. The land was lush and verdant, the air sweet and the soil rich, the hillsides teeming with anim
al life. They would start again there as a family, the four of them, and leave their old world behind. He wondered if he ever would return to Troy, but as he thought it, he immediately knew he would not. This would be the Xanthos’ last great journey.

  He said, “Once we reach the mainland or a large island, we should be able to enlist more oarsmen.”

  “I can row again if needed.”

  He gently took her hands and turned them over. The palms were raw and blistered from helping row the Xanthos to this barren island. He said nothing but gazed at her quizzically.

  “I will bandage them as the men do, and then I can row,” she argued, her face stern. “I am as strong as a man.”

  His heart filled with love for her. “You are the strongest woman I have ever known,” he whispered. “I loved you the moment I first saw you. You are my life and my dreams and my future. I am nothing without you.”

  She gazed at him in wonder, and tears came to her eyes. He took her in his arms and held her close, feeling the beating of her heart against his chest. Then they turned and walked hand in hand back along the beach, their two sons trailing behind.

  The light breeze from the east picked up. The sky started to lighten, and after a while the sun came out.

  EPILOGUE

  Queen Andromache stood on the grassy hilltop, motionless, as she had been since the morning. Now the sun was falling brightly into the west, and still she watched the preparations on the old ship below. She was dressed in a faded brown robe and wrapped in her ancient green shawl. She felt the weight of her years. Her knees ached and her back was on fire, but still she stood.

  She saw someone move out of the crowd on the beach below and sighed. Yet another serving maid with a cup of warm goat’s milk and advice to rest for a while? She squinted shortsightedly, then smiled. Ah, she thought, clever.

  Her small grandson trotted up the hill and without a word sat down on the grass at her feet. After a moment she knelt beside him, ignoring the pain in her knees.

  “Well, Dios,” she asked, “what did your father tell you to say to me?”

  The seven-year-old squinted up at her through his dark fringe, and she impatiently brushed his hair from his face. So like his namesake, she thought.

  “Papa says it’s time now.”

  She glanced at the sun. “Not yet,” she told him.

  They sat in companionable silence for a while. She saw that his gaze was fixed on the Xanthos. “What are you thinking, boy?” she asked.

  “They say Grandpapa will dine tonight with the gods in the Hall of Heroes,” he ventured.

  “Maybe.”

  He looked up at her, his eyes wide. “Isn’t it true, Grandmama? Grandpapa will dine with Argurios, and Hektor and Achilles, and Odysseus?” he persisted anxiously.

  “Certainly not Odysseus,” she told him briskly.

  “Why not? Because he is the Prince of Lies?”

  She smiled. “Odysseus is the most honest man I’ve ever known. No, because Odysseus is not dead.”

  The people of the Seven Hills last had heard from Ithaka some ten years before. The collapse of the Mykene empire, its leaders dead, its armies in ruins, its treasuries empty, had opened the way for barbarians from the north to sweep down through the mainland, and where once-proud cities had ruled, there lay only darkness and fear. But little Ithaka still stood, as Penelope and her growing son Telemachus stood on the cliffs each sunset watching for their king to come home. Andromache remembered Odysseus carving his wife’s face in the sand and wondered if he was doing it still somewhere.

  “How do you know he’s not dead?” little Dios asked.

  “Because Odysseus is a storyteller, and storytellers never die as long as their stories live on.”

  Invigorated by the thought, she stood up, cursed as her knees cracked, then set off down the hill, the boy running after her. Spotting her, two men peeled away from the crowd and raced up the hillside to meet her where a campfire blazed in a small hollow. Andromache’s old bow and specially prepared arrows lay beside it.

  She took each of her sons by the hand and gazed at them fondly. Astyanax had her flame hair and green eyes, and his handsome face bore a dreadful sword wound, a legacy of a battle with the Siculi the previous spring when he nearly had died saving his brother’s life. Still, when he smiled, he looked just like his father. Dex had his mother’s fair hair and the powerful build and dark eyes of his Assyrian sire. He had taken the name Ilos as an act of fealty to his adopted people, but the local folk called him Iulos.

  “I am ready,” she told them, “I have said my goodbyes.”

  She had lain all night racked with grief at the king’s funeral bier, her heart cracked and drained, her soul bereft, her tears staining his face and hands. Then, in the morning, she had dried her eyes, kissed his cold lips and his forehead, and walked away from him forever.

  Now Astyanax turned and signaled, and a score of men leaped to put their shoulders to the Xanthos. There was a rumbling of wood against gravel, a groan of protesting timbers, and then the old ship once more was afloat. Her mast had been dismantled, and the steering oar tied. The galley was heaped with fragrant cedar branches and herbs. At its center the body of Helikaon lay on a cloth of gold. He was dressed in a simple white robe, and the sword of Argurios was on his breast. On his right foot only he wore an old sandal.

  As the drifting ship reached the center of the river and was snatched by the current, the sun touched the horizon. Andromache bent to pick up her bow. She put an arrowhead to the fire, and it blazed brightly. She notched the arrow to the string and closed her eyes briefly to summon all her remembered strength and courage. Then she sighted and loosed the arrow.

  It soared into the sky like a rising star, dipped again, and hit the golden ship at the stern. A blaze started instantly. Within heartbeats archers all along the riverbank had shot their fire arrows into the ship. There was an explosion of flame, and the Xanthos was alight from stem to stern. It was so bright that people in the crowd shaded their eyes, and the roar of burning timbers was the sound of thunder. High above an eagle rose through the blue sky, lifted on the warm air.

  Unbidden, faces appeared in Andromache’s mind: Hektor, the bravest of the Trojans; his brothers Dios and Antiphones; the tale spinner Odysseus; the valiant Mykene warriors Argurios, Kalliades, and Banokles. And Helikaon, her lover, her husband, the keeper of her heart.

  I have walked with heroes, she thought.

  Andromache felt her heart fill again, and she smiled. Then she raised her bow in her fist in final farewell as the blazing ship sailed into the west.