by John Shirley
With that, Achilles turned to face Agamemnon, for the first time with no concealing helmet.
Agamemnon gasped and hastened from the tent, his royal bearing gone.
2
An Unexplainable Couplet
Inside Priam’s palace, most lamps had been snuffed out, though torches aplenty lined the battlements of the city walls, lest the treacherous Argives should seek to murder Troy’s innocents in the night. By the light of a single candle, already mostly consumed, Prince Hector donned his armor—again. He had fought long and hard most of the day. Some of his bandaged wounds still bled, and his aches and bruises besieged him. He had done good, red work in the fields of combat, killed more than enough of the invaders for one day, but, instead of taking needed rest before the mêlée should resume at cockcrow, here he was strapping on breast plate and helm once more.
There was no way to armor himself quietly enough not to wake his wife Andromache, and now she stirred. For a moment she watched him silently, so that Hector did not at once know she was awake. But then she spoke.
“My darling, where are you bound? What business takes you away from our bed?”
“Beloved,” he said, as he sat beside her on the bed’s edge, “word has reached me that Achilles still lives. It was not he who fought and died before our city gates, but another. One dear to Achilles, and he will surely seek bloody revenge on the morrow. He will know that it was I who killed his man, and his sword will seek my blood. I go now to the Oracle to inquire of the battle and its outcome.”
“But I know the outcome, great Hector. You will strike his head from his shoulders. You shall kill him as you killed his double.”
“Aye, I shall meet him, sharing the joy of battle. But I fear I know the outcome better than you, so well that I require no oracle for that. I am no match for his supernatural prowess.”
“But surely that is superstition; he is a man, albeit a mighty one. And so are you, my husband.”
“Do you not see? It matters not if he be demigod or mortal man. He fights with strange and godlike skill in either case. In the end I cannot stand against him.”
She was weeping now. Between her sobs she asked, “Then why leave me if this is to be our last night? What use in seeking out Apollo’s soothsayer?”
“Our gods are deaf as well as mute. The priests face me with empty stares. I must know what fate awaits you, and my father, and the city. Best to know ahead, so we may plan for the worst.”
“Have we not planned for that already?”
“My father and his counselors think they have, but I fear they have not reckoned with just how terrible the worst may be. Now I go to supplicate the Cabiri.” (Which, being interpreted, means “the Old Ones.”) “They are older than the Titans and, it is rumored, know what even the gods do not. What I do now is the last good thing I may do for Troy—and for you, beloved Andromache.” Withal, Hector strode from the room, as Andromache stood and watched him from the door frame.
An hour later, he emerged from a secret tunnel as yet undiscovered by Achaean scouts. He had arranged for a guide who now stepped forth from a shadow into the moonlight. Following him wordlessly, Hector soon found himself stumbling through the darkness. He was little helped by the unsteady light from the smoking torch borne by the robed and hunched dwarf. The diminutive form led him down rocky paths he had never before seen, though, as Prince of Troy, he believed himself familiar with every foot of his kingdom’s territory. He prayed it was not a trap. He knew his death was imminent, but he hoped to live at least long enough to face Achilles and to die a glorious death. His guide made no intelligible sound.
At length the mismatched figures slowed to a stop before what appeared to be a mere fissure between boulders. It turned out to be a cave mouth through which mighty Hector could barely squeeze his frame. When he got through, the dwarf was already well ahead of him on the scarcely navigable trail downward. There were no torches bracketed to the wall, but as Hector climbed and jumped his way along, he came to realize that there were in fact smooth channels, worn by countless feet, but they ran along the sides of the cave walls. He tried not to think of what denizens might frequent this corridor. He was glad his silent guide had advanced so far ahead of him, given his greater familiarity with the passage. Hector did not care to see how the fellow found the going so easy.
When the tunnel gave out, it opened onto a huge grotto, the ceiling of which was too remote for the eye to see. The space was filled with a great black lake. Far out into the still water stood a small island. Hector’s guide was nowhere to be seen, but two new figures populated the rocky outcropping. One stood, his torch revealing nothing beneath his overhanging hood. The other sat or squatted, it was hard to tell which because of the way he, or she, was robed. This one’s face was covered, too. The standing figure spoke a single word, which penetrated the gloom so clearly, it seemed to Hector that it had been spoken directly into his ear by someone standing in concealment beside him, so that he turned to make sure he was alone on the bank.
“Ask.”
The prince bowed both knee and head and spoke. “O Oracle of Kronos, I would learn the secret of the morrow: who will prevail in battle? What will become of the vanquished?”
Now it was the seated figure who spoke, if it really was speech. What it uttered did not sound at all like any tongue known to the well-traveled Hector. It was guttural and bubbling, more like gargling than speaking. Whatever the intended meaning, this saying could do him no good. But then the standing figure spoke, and Hector understood. It was even as Apollo’s oracle at Delphi: the seeress would speak in unknown tongues, and the attendant priest would interpret in mortal dialects.
“The one who supplicates R’lyeh
Shall perish but shall win the day.”
When Priam’s son raised his head to look, both figures had disappeared, though neither before nor now had he seen any boat pulled up to the tiny island. He could not suppress a shudder, but his soul was eased of its burden. His city and his loved ones should survive his death—because he had thought to visit the oracle He had been wiser than even he suspected.
3
Spawn of Thetis
Hector had wept with his wife as he embraced her for what both knew to be the last time. But as he strode into the midst of his brave Trojan soldiers, his mood lightened. He realized he had become elated. It was as if knowing his fate beforehand drained all worry and uncertainty from him. He felt free to fight his hardest, to fight for fighting’s sake. Indeed, did not every true warrior feel the same deep down, since at the last all must fall to the sword of some foe? Any one of them might be Hades’ agent come to claim him. No prowess could save a man from that. And if this Achilles were to prove the scythe of Hades today, what of it? Yes, he would thrust and swing with pure abandon for as long as the Fates assigned him to play the game.
His men seemed to expect something full of import. Some clapped him on the back with admiration and affection, disregarding his royal gravity for this moment that made them alike, brothers of the blade. Hector could read in the eyes of many that they knew the outcome as well as he did and were starting to mourn already. For their part, the advancing Argive host was rejuvenated, singing lusty battle chants, knowing now that their demigod champion was alive after all, doubly convinced of his invulnerability. It was hard to defeat men like these, who seemed already to rejoice in a victory that no oncoming events might steal from them.
The dance of death given and taken began, as it always did, with a largely ineffective exchange of arrows, though ever fewer as supplies waned. Upraised shields frustrated their descent, making a sound like hard rain on a roof above. Cast lances did more damage, but by now these were scarcer, too, and most were saved for the thick of combat, where more accurate aim was possible. Still, using spears as lances made them more unwieldy in such close quarters, where swords were easier to heft and swing. The twin armies met with an impact like rival cloud banks crashing together. The compact masses of both armies
held locked for a moment before small rivulets of men began to trace twisting channels through the living wall of the enemy, until permeation became vitiation, and the solid continents of men shattered into a multitude of island knots of hacking and thrusting swordsmen. Men imagined they were hallucinating as blurs of orange and red clouded their vision, but the blurs were very real splashes of blood and woven lattices of darting bronze swords.
The pattern changed yet again when the carnage retracted into a rough circle, its center occupied by a pair of men so similar in stature and build that they might have been Castor and Pollux; only the Dioscuri were not believed to try to slay one another as these did. Achilles had appeared, striding a path carpeted thick with blood, facing a gore-spattered Hector who had arrived in much the same style. Swords drawn, the two stood still in the eye of the hurricane that raged around them, none of their men daring to take their curious eyes off their own struggles.
Hector charged, sword and battle axe performing glinting acrobatics in the air. Achilles somehow met both with his single sword, then jabbed at Hector’s chest, pulling his blow at the last second, laughing. He was toying with Priam’s son, who smiled at the jest, as he was equally rejoicing in the sport.
Hector let the fight take him, use him as its sword against great Achilles. Before he consciously recognized it, Hector had aimed a razor blow that hacked off Achilles’ right hand. He saw it drop to the ground and felt stunned with new hope: this Achilles was by no means invulnerable! In that moment he noticed a faint greenish tint on the severed hand as it bounced in the bloodied dust. Could it have begun to decompose so quickly? Surely not. But this astonishment was at once replaced by a fresh one, as he saw another right hand, with the same tint, reach down to retrieve the sword from the loosening grip of the lost fist. His foeman had grown a new limb in a moment! Thus did Hector discover the secret of Achilles’ invincibility. He could be wounded, and seriously, but, like some reptile, he could replace what he had lost.
The Prince of Troy cursed himself for becoming distracted, though he could scarcely help it. He set his attention again on Achilles. As he calculated the best course in view of what he now knew, he was again nonplussed, this time at the sight of Achilles reaching for his encompassing headgear and removing it.
The face revealed was not that of any tribe of man, he was sure of that. Thetis’ son had no hair on his head, no lordly beard, no lips, even. His eyes bulged and showed no emotion, did not even blink. His wide mouth opened, showing no teeth. And from it rushed a nebula of purplish mist. Hector involuntarily breathed in the noxious cloud and found himself instantly paralyzed. He wondered for a second whether the stuff would also have the effect of numbing the pain of the death blow he was about to receive. And thus he went down, cruelly sundered.
The news of Hector’s defeat spread like wildfire back along the lines and over the walls of Troy. Andromache did not seem to take the report with the shock and hysteria all expected. She only shook her head in resignation, as if she had already seen this section of the Fates’ tapestry. She alone knew that she had. Likewise, she alone knew of Hector’s visit to the forbidden prophetess. The oracle had given her no hope for her husband, but now she prayed the rest would come true, that Hector’s sacrifice should somehow win Troy’s salvation.
4
The Gift of the Gods
The contest between the Achaean alliance and Troy had stretched on for so long, a decade so far, that few remembered the cause of it. And those who did resented the fact that so many had spent their lives for nothing, for mere revenge in a domestic melodrama. For the whole crusade had been mounted to recover one Helen, the adulterous wife of King Menelaus. She had abandoned the unhandsome man for a young lover, himself of dubious virility, named Paris, a dandy visiting from Troy, who had bewitched Queen Helen with a cock-and-bull story about a dream in which he had been chosen to compare three beauties: Aphrodite, Athena—and Helen. He had given Helen the crown, and, once informed of this oneiric victory, she had given him her heart—at least her body—and the pair of fornicators had escaped to Troy. The Greek kings had agreed that they should all lose face if one of their number were allowed to be cuckolded without punishment. Their wives shook their heads in disbelief at the men’s childish plan but knew they dared not protest. And so the Achaean fleet sailed.
But the Trojans had even greater cause to bemoan the foolishness of their warring. All resented the presence in their city of the Greek adulteress, whom they regarded as little more than a common harlot, and wondered how it counted as a matter of honor for Troy to defend her and her girlish paramour against the Achaeans, who were clearly in the right. No wonder the war was going so badly; what self-respecting deity should reckon Troy worth defending in these circumstances? Their only comfort was that their opponents’ gods must be equally disgusted with them, hence the endless deadlock where no battle was ever decisive. It was like a dream, where the same thing happened over and over again.
If it was looking like a stalemated child’s game, perhaps it was appropriate that a child’s toy should beak the logjam. For one morning the Trojan watchers on the ramparts scurried to report to the grieving Priam that one of the gods’ playthings had fallen from Olympus onto the plain just outside the city gates. It was a huge wooden horse of crude but unmistakable design. The king called in his most trusted priest who read the fresh entrails of a dove and announced that the giant, wheeled effigy was indeed a gift from the gods, a token of their blessing and favor, and victory was surely within sight. They need only open the gates and wheel the thing in, and the protection of Zeus and Hera would be theirs. Priam, ever one to heed the guidance of the gods, considered this plan and quickly agreed. He had no reason to suspect that his priest had only days before received a talent of gold from an Achaean envoy.
There was great rejoicing in the streets of Troy when the gates were opened and the horse pushed through. The king and his nobles sat upon a hastily erected dais wide enough to support several thrones. They watched excitedly as Priam’s chaplain intoned the ancient psalms of thanksgiving and slit the throats of sacrificial beasts. Ritual dancers gestured and swept their limbs with contorted grace. Flutes and lyres added to the festivities—until a trapdoor in the equine belly swung loose and, like foals exiting a mare’s womb, a squad of Achaean soldiers poured out and hit the ground running. The priest knew what was coming, but he was nonetheless quite surprised when the first thrown lance skewered him through the back like a gigged frog, in mid-prayer.
The crowds scattered like panicked sheep upon the appearance of a wolf. The Achaean wolves played their part and set to the slaughter. Priam and his retinue were clapped in chains, though the universal belief in numinous charm surrounding any and all royalty, whether or not one’s own, protected them from further rude treatment, at least for the present.
The invaders quickly opened the wall again, and their comrades poured in like a flood through the sluice gates. The Trojan warriors had been caught completely off guard and mounted no greater resistance than an occasional armed struggle in an alley. The city was occupied in only a few hours. There was an initial wave of executions, but these had ceased, and the nobles prayed there would be no more. It was not long before Trojans and Achaeans alike settled into an uneasy peace, awaiting further decrees of fate.
In this relative calm, the one exception was Achilles. His breach with Agamemnon was easily forgotten, his sadness at Patroclus’ passing mitigated by the glorious death his friend had died. And now he set about tying up the only remaining loose end. He began to look for the craven Paris, who was hiding somewhere in the corners of the city, perhaps even within the palace. No one opposed him; indeed, most Trojans blamed Paris for the ills that had befallen them. They were pleased enough to see whatever justice Achilles and Agamemnon might deem fit for him. Some Trojan troops gladly volunteered to join in the search, or as they viewed it, the hunt.
The search was systematic; Paris eluded his pursuers for a week or so only becau
se he had a few retainers and servants loyal enough to report to him the movements of the searchers. At length, however, the reports were that Achilles and his party were closing in, and that mere minutes remained to Paris. Helen had been taken from him, and he knew he would die alone. He waited like a condemned prisoner in his cell, but an idle peek out his curtained window galvanized him to reckless action. There below him in the street stood Achilles, still helmeted, talking in a friendly manner with Helen. His armor was impenetrable even if he were not physically invulnerable. But his heel! Did not the story have it that his right heel could be wounded?
Paris turned back to his chamber and quickly scanned the interior. Yes, there it was: his hunting bow and a single arrow in the quiver. He thought of the poison draught he had prepared lest he fall alive into the hands of the vengeful Achaeans. He crossed the room and withdrew the sturdy shaft, then poured most of the chemical on the arrowhead. Then he notched the arrow on his bow and used his best hunter’s aim.
Like an ambushed deer, mighty Achilles crumpled to the pavement, the potent drug coursing through his screaming veins. Helen screamed her lungs out, drawing the attention of nearby soldiers, half of whom dragged her struggling form away, the others attending to the stiffening body of the demigod. They pulled his ever-present helmet off to aid his breathing, but quickly stumbled back away from the visage now revealed. A few heard Achilles’ last words, though all anyone could afterward recall was the mention of his mother’s name. Was he calling to her? Praying to her?
Word was secretly passed to the deposed princess Andromache that her husband’s slayer had met with justice, but she did not appear gratified, as they expected. For she remembered the words of the Cabiri seeress, whom men called Cassogtha:
