Vengeance of Orion

by Ben Bova

  As long as I live, I thought silently, I will struggle to reach your throat. It was a mistake to tell me that you are not immortal. I am the Hunter, and now I know the prey I seek. I will kill you, golden Apollo, Creator, whatever your true name and shape may be. While I live I will seek your death and nothing less. Just as you killed her, I will kill you.

  Chapter 8

  "You there! Hold!"

  I was standing in the Trojan camp again, a sudden sharp wind gusting in from the sea and shredding the mist that had covered the plain. Campfires dotted the darkness, and off in the distance the beetling towers of Troy bulked black and menacing against the moon-bright sky.

  I tottered on unsteady feet, like a man who has drunk too much wine, like a man who has suddenly been pushed through a door that he had not seen. The Golden One and the other Creators were gone as completely as if they had been nothing more than a dream. But I knew they were real. They were out there in another plane of existence, toying with us, arguing over which side should win this wretched war. My hands clenched into fists as the memory of their faces and their words fueled the rage burning within me.

  A pair of sentries approached me warily, heavy spears in their hands. I gulped down a deep breath of chill night air to calm myself.

  "I am an emissary from the High King Agamemnon," I said, slowly and carefully. "I have been sent to speak to Prince Hector."

  The sentries were an unlikely pair, one short and squat with a dirty, tangled black beard and a pot belly bulging his chain mail corselet, the other taller and painfully thin, either clean-shaven or too young to start a beard.

  "Prince Hector the Tamer of Horses he wants to see," said the pot-belly. He laughed harshly. "So would I!"

  The younger one grinned and showed a gap where a front tooth was missing.

  "An emissary, eh?" Pot-belly eyed me suspiciously. "With a sword at his side and a mantle of chain mail across his shoulders. More likely a spy. Or an assassin."

  I held up my herald's wand. "I have been sent by the High King. I am not here to fight. Take my sword and mantle, if they frighten you." I could have disabled them both before they knew what had happened, but that was not my mission.

  "Be a lot safer to ram this spear through your guts and have done with it," said Pot-belly.

  The youngster put out a restraining hand. "Hermes protects messengers, you know. I wouldn't want to draw down the anger of the Trickster."

  Pot-belly scowled and muttered, but finally satisfied himself by taking my sword and chain mail. He did not search me, and therefore did not take the dagger strapped to my right thigh. He was more interested in loot than security.

  Once Pot-belly had slipped my baldric across his shoulder and fastened my mantle under his quivering chins, the two of them led me to their chief.

  They were Dardanians, allies of the Trojans who had come from several miles up the coast to fight against the invading Achaians. Over the next hour or so I was escorted from the chief of the Dardanian contingent to a Trojan officer, from there to the tent of Hector's chief lieutenants, and finally past the makeshift horse corral and the silently waiting chariots, tipped over with their long yoke poles poking into the air, to the small plain tent and guttering fire of Prince Hector.

  At each stop I explained my mission again. Dardanians and Trojans alike spoke a dialect of the Greek spoken by the Achaians, different but not so distant as to be unintelligible. I realized that the city's defenders included contingents from many areas up and down the coast. The Achaians had been raiding their towns for years, and now they had all banded together under Trojan leadership to resist the barbarian invaders.

  That was the Golden One's aim: to have the Trojans beat back the Achaians and gain supremacy over the Aegean. Eventually they would establish an empire that would span Europe, the Middle East, and India.

  If that was his goal, then mine must be to prevent it from being achieved. If Odysseus was offering a compromise that would allow the Achaians to sail away without burning Troy to the ground, then I must sabotage the offer. I felt a momentary pang of conscience. Odysseus trusted me. Or, I asked myself, had he sent me on this diplomatic mission because he could better afford to lose me than one of his own people?

  With those thoughts swirling in my head, I was brought before Hector.

  His tent was barely large enough for himself and a servant. A pair of armored noblemen stood by the fire outside the tent's entrance, their bronze breastplates gleaming against the night. Insects buzzed and darted in the firelight. No slaves or women in sight. Hector himself stood at the entrance flap to the tent. He was a big man for these people, nearly my own height.

  Hector wore no armor, no badge of his rank. Merely a soft clean tunic belted at the waist, with an ornamental dagger hanging from the leather belt. He had no need to impress anyone with his grandeur. He possessed that calm inner strength that needs no outward decorations.

  In the flickering light of his campfire he studied me silently for a moment. Those same grave brown eyes. His face was handsome, intelligent, though there were lines of weariness around his eyes, furrows across his broad brow. Despite the fullness of his rich brown beard I saw that his cheeks were becoming hollow. The strain of this war was taking its toll on him.

  "You are the man at the gate," he said finally. His words were measured, neither surprise nor anger in them.

  I nodded.

  He looked me over carefully. "Your name?"

  "Orion."

  "From where?"

  "Far to the west of here. Beyond the seas where the sun sets."

  "Beyond Okeanus?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  He puzzled over that, brow knitted, for a few moments. Then he asked, "What brings you to the plain of Ilios? Why are you fighting for the Achaians?"

  "A duty I owe to a god," I said.

  "Which god?"

  "Athene."

  "Athene sent you here to fight for the Achaians?" He seemed concerned at that, almost worried.

  With a shake of my head, I answered, "I arrived at the Achaian camp the night before yesterday. I had never seen Troy before. Suddenly, in the midst of the fighting, I acted on impulse. I don't know what made me do what I did. It all happened in the flash of a moment."

  Hector smiled tightly. "Battle frenzy. A god took control of your spirit, my friend, and inspired you to deeds no mortal could achieve unaided. It has happened to me many times."

  I smiled back at him. "Yes, perhaps that is what happened to me."

  "Have no doubt of it. Ares or Athene seized your spirit and filled you with battle frenzy. You could have challenged Achilles himself in such a state."

  Slaves came out of the darkness to set up chairs of stretched hides and offer fruit and wine. Following Hector's lead, I sat and took a little of each. The quality of the Trojan wine was far superior to that of the Achaians.

  "You carry the wand of a herald and say that you are here as an emissary of Agamemnon," Hector said, leaning back tiredly in his creaking chair.

  "I bring an offer of peace."

  "We have heard such offers before. Is there anything new in what Agamemnon proposes?"

  I noticed that his two aides stepped closer, eager to hear what I had to say. I thought briefly of Odysseus, who trusted me. But I said: "The High King repeats his earlier offer of peace. If you will restore Helen and the fortune she brought from Sparta with her, and pay an indemnity for the costs the Achaians have incurred, Agamemnon will lead his ships away from Ilios and Troy."

  Hector glanced up at his two standing lieutenants, who muttered grimly.

  Then to me he said, "We did not accept these terms when the Achaians had us penned up inside our city walls, without allies. Now that we outnumber them and have them penned in their own camp, why should we even consider such insulting terms?"

  I had to make it sound at least halfway convincing, I thought. "In the view of the Achaians, Prince Hector, your success today was helped greatly by the fact that Achilles did
not enter the battle. He will not remain on the sidelines forever."

  "One man," Hector countered.

  "The best warrior in the Achaian host," I pointed out. "And his Myrmidones are a formidable fighting unit, I am told."

  "True enough," admitted Hector. "Still, this offer of peace is no different than all the others, even though we now hold the upper hand."

  "Then what am I to tell the High King?"

  Hector got to his feet. "That is not my decision to make. I command the army, but my father is still king in Troy. He and his council must consider your offer."

  I rose too. "King Priam?"

  "Polydamas," he called, "conduct this herald to the king. Aeneas, spread the word to the chiefs that we will not attack until King Priam has considered the latest peace offering from Agamemnon."

  A surge of elation swept through me. The Trojans will not attack the Achaian camp as long as I am dickering with their king! I can give Odysseus and the others a day's respite from battle, at least.

  And then I realized that this is exactly what Odysseus had planned. The King of Ithaca had sent an expendable hero—one whom Hector would recognize, yet not someone important to the Achaian strength—into the Trojan camp in a crafty move to gain a day's recuperation from this morning's disaster.

  I had thought that I was betraying Odysseus, but he had outsmarted both Hector and me.

  Trying to look properly grave and not let my emotions show, I followed the Trojan nobleman called Polydamas through the camp on the plain and to the walls of Troy.

  Chapter 9

  I entered the fabled city of Troy in the dead of night. The moon was up, but still it was so dark that I could see practically nothing. The city walls loomed above like ominous shadows. I saw feeble lanterns lighting a gate as we passed a massive old oak tree, tossing and sighing in the night breeze, leaning heavily, bent by the incessant wind of Ilios.

  To approach the gate we had to follow a road that led alongside the beetling walls. Just before the gate a second curtain wall extended on the other side of the road, so that anyone coming up to the gate was vulnerable to fire from both sides, as well as ahead.

  The gate itself seemed only lightly defended. Virtually the entire Trojan force was camped down by the beach, I realized. A trio of teenagers were lounging in the open gateway, their inevitable long spears resting against the stone wall. A few more stood on the battlements above.

  Inside, a broad packed-earth street led between buildings that seemed no more than two stories tall. The moon's pale cold light only made the shadows of their shuttered fronts seem deeper and darker. It must have been well past midnight. Hardly anyone was stirring along this main street or in the black alleyways leading off it, not even a cat.

  Polydamas was not a wordy fellow. In virtually total silence he led me to a low-roofed building and into a tiny room lit by the fluttering yellow-blue flame of a small copper oil lamp sitting on a three-legged wooden stool. There was a single narrow bed and a chest of cedarwood, nothing else. A rough woolen blanket covered the bed.

  "You will be summoned to the king's presence in the morning," said Polydamas, his longest speech of the night. With not another word he left me, closing the wooden door softly behind him.

  And bolting it.

  With nothing better to do, I undressed, pulled back the scratchy blanket, and stretched out on the bed. It was springy; a thin mattress of feathers atop a webbing of ropes.

  As I started to drowse off I suddenly realized that the Golden One might invade my dreams once again. For a while I tried to stave off sleep, but my body got the better of my will, and inevitably my eyes closed. My last waking thought was to wonder how I might make contact with some of the other Creators, with the Zeus who regarded the Golden One's plans so questioningly, with the woman who openly opposed him.

  But if I did dream, I had no memory of it when I was awakened by the door bolt snapping back. I sat up, immediately alert, and reached for the dagger that I had unstrapped, but left on the bed between my body and the wall.

  A serving woman backed into the room, carrying a basin and a jug of water. When she turned and saw me sitting there naked, she smiled, made a little curtsy, and deposited the pottery atop the cedarwood chest. Then she backed out of the room and shut the door. Outside, I could hear the giggling of several women.

  A Trojan man entered my room after a single sharp rap on the door. He seemed more a courtier than a warrior. He was fairly tall but round-shouldered, soft-looking, with a bulging middle. His beard was quite gray, his pate balding, his tunic richly embroidered and covered with a long sleeveless robe of deep green.

  "I am to conduct you to King Priam's audience chamber, once you have had your morning meal."

  Diplomacy moved at a polite pace; I was glad of it. The Trojan courtier led me to the urinals in the back of the house, then back to my room for a quick washup. Breakfast consisted of fruit, cheese, and flat bread, washed down with goat's milk. We ate in the large kitchen that fronted the house. Half the room was taken up by a big circular hearth, under an opening in the roof. It was cold and empty except for a scattering of gray ashes that looked as if they had been there a long time.

  Through the kitchen's open window I could see men and women going about their morning chores. Serving women attended us, eyeing me curiously. The courtier ignored them, except to give orders for more figs and honey.

  Finally we walked out along what seemed to be Troy's only major street, sloping gently uphill toward a majestic building of graceful fluted columns and a steeply pitched roof. Priam's palace, I guessed. Or the city's main temple. Perhaps both. The sun was not high yet, but still it felt much warmer here in the street than out on the windy plain.

  "Is that where we're going?" I pointed.

  The courtier bobbed his head. "Yes, of course. The king's palace. A more splendid palace doesn't exist anywhere in the world—except perhaps in Egypt, of course."

  I was surprised at how small the city actually was. And crowded. Houses and shops clustered together tightly. The street was unpaved, and sloped like a V so that water would run down its middle when it rained. Cart wheels had worn deep grooves in it. The men and women bustling about their morning's work seemed curious yet courteous. I received bows and smiles as we strolled up toward the palace.

  "The royal princes, such as Hector and Aleksandros and their brothers, live in the palace with the king." My courtier was turning into a tour guide. He gestured back down the street. "Nearer the Scaean gate are the homes of the lesser princes and nobility. Fine homes they are, nevertheless, far finer than you will find in Mycenae or even Miletus."

  We were walking through the market area now. Awning-shaded stalls lined the two-story high brick homes here, although I saw precious little merchandise on sale: bread, dried vegetables, a skinny lamb that bleated mournfully.

  Yet the merchants, men and women both, seemed smiling and happy.

  "You bring a day of peace," the courtier told me. "Farmers can bring their produce to market this morning. Wood-cutters can go out to the forest and bring back fuel before night falls. The people are grateful for that."

  "The siege has hurt you," I murmured.

  "To some extent, of course. But we are not going hungry. There is enough grain stored in the royal treasury to last for years! The city's water comes from a spring that Apollo himself protects. And when we really need firewood or cattle or anything else, our troops escort the necessary people on a foray inland." He lifted his gray-bearded chin a notch or two. "We will not starve."

  I said nothing.

  He took my silence for an argument. "Look at those walls! The Achaians will never be able to scale them."

  I followed his admiring gaze down a crooked alley and saw the towered walls that rose above the houses. They did indeed look high and solid and strong.

  "Apollo and Poseidon helped old King Laomedon build those walls, and they have withstood every assault made on them. Of course, Herakles once sacked the city
, but he had divine help and even he didn't dare try to breach those walls. He attacked over on the western side, where the oldest wall stands. But that was long ago.

  I perked up my ears. The western wall was weaker? But, as if sensing that he had said too much, my guide lapsed into a red-faced silence. We walked the rest of the way to the palace without further words.

  Men-at-arms held their spears stiffly upright as we passed the crimson-painted columns at the front of the palace and entered its cool interior. I saw no marble, which somehow surprised me. The columns and the thick palace walls were made of a grayish, granitelike stone, polished to gleaming smoothness. Inside, the floors were covered with brightly colored polished tiles. The walls were plastered and painted in bright yellows and reds, with blue or green borders running along the ceilings.

  The interior was cold. Despite the sun's heat, those thick stone walls insulated the palace so well that I almost imagined I could see my breath frosting in the shaded air.

  The hall beyond the entrance was beautifully decorated with painted landscapes on its plastered walls. Scenes of lovely ladies and handsome men in green fields rich with towering trees. No battles, no hunting scenes, no proclamations of imperial power or bloodthirstiness.

  Statues lined this corridor, most of them life-size, some smaller, several so large that their heads or outstretched arms scraped the polished beams of the high ceiling.

  "The city's gods," my courtier explained. "Most of these statues stood outside the city's four main gates, before the war. Of course we brought them in here for safekeeping from the despoiling Achaians."

  "Of course," I agreed.

  The statues seemed to be marble. To my surprise, they were brightly painted. Hair and beards were deep black, with bluish highlights. Gowns and tunics were mostly gold, and real jewels adorned them. The flesh was delicately colored, and the eyes were painted so vividly that they almost seemed to be watching me.