by Ben Bova
Chapter 22
The day dawned gray and dreary. The Achaians, aching and sick from their revelries of the night, were quiet and solemn as the sun climbed slowly behind banks of scudding clouds. The wind from the sea hinted rain, and the chill of approaching autumn.
Neither I nor my Hatti band took part in the sacrifices. Poletes was puzzled at that.
"But you serve the goddess," he said.
"She is dead. Regardless of what they offer, she won't be able to receive it."
Muttering "sacrilege," Poletes wandered off toward the tall pyres of driftwood and timber that the slaves and thetes were piling up in the center of the camp. I remained near our own fire, close by Odysseus's boats, and watched.
Nestor led the priests in a procession around the camp, followed by Agamemnon and the other chiefs—all in their most splendid armor and carrying long glittering spears that seemed to me more ornamental than battle weapons.
While they paraded through the camp, singing hymns of praise to Zeus and all the other immortals, the sacrificial victims were being assembled by the pyres. There was a regular herd of goats and bulls and sheep, hundreds of them, kicking up enough dust to obscure the blackened remains of Troy up on the bluff. Their bleatings and bellowings made a strange counterpoint to the chanting and singing of the Achaians.
Standing off to one side of them were the human sacrifices, every man over the age of twelve who had been captured alive, their hands tightly bound behind their backs, their ankles hobbled. Even from the distance where I stood, I could recognize the old courtier who had escorted me in the palace. They stood silently, grimly, knowing full well what awaited them but neither begging for mercy nor bewailing their fate. I suppose they each knew that nothing was going to alter their destiny.
The whole long day was spent in ritual slaughter. First the animals, from a few doves to raging, bellowing bulls that thrashed madly even though their hooves were firmly lashed together, arching their backs and tossing their heads until the priest's stone ax cut through their throats with a shower of hot blood. Even horses were sacrificed, dozens of them.
Then came the men. One by one they were led to the blood-soaked altar, made to kneel and bow their heads. The lucky ones died in a single stroke. Many were not so fortunate.
By the time it was ended and the pyres were lit, the priests were covered with blood and the camp stank of entrails and excrement. As the sun went down the pyres blazed across the darkening landscape, sending up smoke that was thought to be pleasing to the gods.
Then the whole camp swarmed toward Agamemnon's boats, in the center of the beach, where the spoils of Troy had been heaped high. Hundreds of women and children stood near the pile of loot, guarded by a grinning handful of warriors.
Agamemnon climbed up onto a beautifully carved chair pillaged from the city. It had been set up on a makeshift platform, to turn it into a rough sort of throne. Then he began to divide the spoils, so much to each chieftain, starting with white-bearded old Nestor.
The Achaians crowded around, greed and envy shining in their eyes. I stayed by Odysseus's boat and watched from afar. I noticed that Lukka and his men stayed with me.
"Your own goods are safe?" I asked him.
He grunted affirmatively. "They wanted to take our women for the High King to divide out, but we convinced them to leave us alone."
I almost smiled, picturing Lukka and his disciplined soldiers forming a phalanx against a gaggle of hung-over Achaian warriors.
Far into the night the ceremony went. Agamemnon parceled out bronze armor and weapons, gold ornaments, beautiful urns and vases, porphyry and onyx, glittering jewels, kitchen implements of copper, iron tripods and cooking pots, robes, silks, blankets, tapestries—and women, young boys and girls.
Half of everything he kept for himself: the High King's prerogative. But as some of the chieftains and men passed me, carrying their loot back to their boats, I heard them complain of the High King's meanness.
"He's got the generosity of a dung beetle."
"He knew we had done the hardest fighting, up on the wall. And what do we get for it? Less than his brother."
"Those women should have been ours, I tell you. The fat king is too greedy."
"What can you do? He takes what he wants and we get his leavings."
I thought that even Odysseus looked less than pleased when he approached me. The pyres smoldered in the distance, but our campfires lit his darkly bearded face with flickers of red.
"Orion," he called to me. I went to him.
"Your servant Poletes is digging a grave for himself," Odysseus said. "He is mocking the High King's generosity."
I looked into Odysseus's dark eyes. "Isn't everyone?" I asked mildly.
His answering smile told me how he felt. "But not everyone is speaking so loosely within earshot of Nestor and Menalaos and others who will report his words to Agamemnon. You'd better see to it. The old storyteller is swimming in dangerous waters."
"Thank you, my lord. I will see to it."
I hurried over toward Agamemnon's part of the camp, passing a stream of disgruntled Achaians toting their loot.
Poletes was sitting on the sand by a small campfire, practically under the nose of one of the High King's boats, surrounded by a mob of squatting, standing, grinning, laughing Achaian men. None of them were of the nobility. Off in the shadows, though, I noticed Nestor standing with his skinny arms folded across his chest, frowning in Poletes's direction.
". . . and do you remember when Hector drove them all back inside our own gates, here, and he came in with an arrow barely puncturing his skin, crying like a woman, 'We're doomed! We're doomed!'"
The crowd around the fire roared with laughter. I had to admit that the old storyteller could mimic Agamemnon's high voice almost perfectly.
"I wonder what Clytemnestra will do when her brave and noble husband comes home?" Poletes grinned. "I wonder if her bed is high enough off the ground to hide her lover?"
Men rolled on the ground with laughter. Tears flowed. I started to push my way through the crowd to get to him.
But I was too late. A dozen armed men tramped in, and Poletes's audience scrambled out of their way. I recognized Menalaos at their head.
"Storyteller!" he snapped. "The High King wants to hear what you have to say. Let's see if your scurrilous tales can make him laugh."
Poletes's eyes went wide with sudden fear. "But I only . . ."
Two of the armed guards grabbed him under his armpits and hauled him to his feet.
"Come along," said Menalaos.
I stepped in front of him. "This man is my servant. I will take care of him."
Before Menalaos could reply, Nestor bustled up. "The High King has demanded to see this teller of tales. No one can interfere!" It was the shortest speech I had ever heard the old man make.
With a small shrug, Menalaos headed off toward Agamemnon's quarters, his guards dragging Poletes after him, followed by Nestor, me, and all of the men who had been rollicking at the storyteller's gibes.
Agamemnon still sat on his makeshift throne, fat, flushed with wine, flanked by the treasures of Troy. His chubby fingers gripped the chair arms as he eyed Poletes being hauled before him. Rings glittered on each finger and both his thumbs.
The old storyteller knelt trembling before the High King, who glared down at his skinny, shabby presence.
"You have been telling lies about me," Agamemnon snarled.
Poletes drew himself together and lifted his chin to face the High King. "Not so, your royal highness. I am a professional storyteller. I do not tell lies, I speak only of what I see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears."
"You speak filthy lies!" Agamemnon screamed, his voice rising shrilly. "About my wife!"
"If your wife were an honest woman, sire, I would not be here at all. I'd be in the marketplace at Argos, telling stories to the people, as I should be."
"I'll listen to no calumnies about my wife," Agamemnon warned.
>
But Poletes insisted, "The High King is supposed to be the highest judge in the land, the fairest and most impartial. Everyone knows what is going on in Mycenae—ask anyone. Your own captive Cassandra, a princess of Troy, has prophesied . . ."
"Silence!" roared the High King.
"How can you silence the truth, son of Atreus? How can you turn back the destiny that fate has chosen for you?"
Now Agamemnon trembled, with anger. He hauled himself up from his chair and stepped down to the ground before Poletes.
"Hold him!" he commanded, drawing out the jeweled dagger at his belt.
The guards gripped Poletes's frail arms.
"I can silence you, magpie, by separating you from your lying tongue."
"Wait!" I shouted, and pushed my way toward them.
Agamemnon looked up as I approached, his piggish little eyes suddenly worried, almost fearful.
"This man is my servant," I said. "I will punish him."
"Very well then," said Agamemnon, pointing his dagger toward the iron sword at my side. "You take out his tongue."
I shook my head. "That is too cruel a punishment for a few joking words."
"You refuse me?"
"The man's a storyteller," I pleaded. "If you take out his tongue you condemn him to starvation or slavery."
Slowly, Agamemnon's flushed, heavy features arranged themselves in a smile. It was not a joyful one.
"A storyteller, eh?" He turned to Poletes, who knelt like a sagging sack of rags in the grip of the two burly guards. "You only speak what you see and what you hear, you claim. Very well. You will see and hear—nothing. Ever again!"
My guts churned as I realized what he intended to do. I reached for my sword, only to find ten spears surrounding me, almost touching my skin.
A hand clasped my shoulder. I turned. It was Menalaos, his face grave. "Be still, Orion. The storyteller must be punished. No sense getting yourself killed over a servant."
Poletes was staring at me, his eyes begging me to do something. I moved toward him, only to be stopped by the points of the spears against my flesh.
"My wife has told me how you protected her during the sack of the temple," Menalaos said, low in my ear. "I owe you a debt of gratitude. Don't force me to repay it with your blood."
"Then run to Odysseus," I begged him. "Please. Perhaps he can soothe the High King's anger."
Menalaos merely shook his head. "It will all be over before I could reach the Ithacans' first boat. Look."
Nestor himself carried a glowing brand from one of the pyres, a wicked, perverse smile on his aged face. Agamemnon took it from him as the guards yanked on Poletes's arms while one of them put a knee in his back. Agamemnon grabbed the old storyteller by the hair and pulled his head back. Again I felt the spear points piercing my clothes.
"Wander through the world in darkness, cowardly teller of lies."
Poletes screamed in agony as Agamemnon burned out first his left eye and then his right. The old man fainted. The smile of a madman still twisting his thick lips, Agamemnon tossed the brand away, took out his dagger again, and slit the ears off the unconscious old man's head.
The guards dropped Poletes's limp body to the sand.
Agamemnon looked up and said in his loudest voice, "So comes justice to anyone who maligns the truth!" Then he turned, grinning, to me. "You can take your servant back now."
The guards around me stepped back, but still held their spears leveled, ready to kill me if I moved on their king.
I looked down at Poletes's bleeding form, then up to the High King.
"I heard Cassandra's prophecy," I said. "She is never believed, but she is never wrong."
Agamemnon's half-demented smile vanished. He glared at me.
For a long wavering moment I thought he would command the guards to kill me on the spot.
But then I heard Lukka's voice calling from a little way behind me. "My lord Orion, are you all right? Do you need help?"
The guards turned their gaze toward his voice. I saw that Lukka had brought his entire contingent, fully armed and ready for battle: thirty-five Hatti soldiers armed with shields and iron swords.
"He needs no help," Agamemnon answered, "except to carry away the slave I have punished."
With that he turned and hurried back toward his hut. The guards seemed to breathe one great sigh of relief and let their spears drop away from me.
I went to Poletes, picked up his bleeding, whimpering body, and carried him back to our own tents.
Chapter 23
I tended Poletes through the remainder of that night. There was only wine to ease his pain, and nothing at all to ease the anguish of his mind. I laid him in my own tent, groaning and sobbing. Lukka found a healer, a dignified old graybeard with two young women assistants, who spread salve on his burns and the bleeding slits where his ears had been.
"Not even the gods can return his sight," the healer told me solemnly, in a whisper so that Poletes could not hear. "The eyes have been burned away."
I knew what that felt like. I remembered my whole body being burned alive.
"The gods be damned," I growled. "Will he live?"
If my words shocked the healer, he gave no sign of it. "His heart is strong. If he survives the night he will live for years to come."
The healer mixed some powder into the wine cup and made Poletes drink. It put him into a deep sleep almost at once. His women prepared a bowl of poultice and showed me how to smear it over a cloth and put it on Poletes's eyes. They were silent throughout, instructing me by showing, rather than speaking, as if they were mute, and never dared to look directly into my face. The healer seemed surprised that I myself wanted to act as Poletes's nurse. But he said nothing and maintained his professional dignity.
I sat over the blinded old storyteller until dawn, putting fresh compresses over his eyes every half hour or so, keeping him from reaching up to the burns with his hands. He slept, but even in sleep he groaned and writhed.
Long after dawn had turned the sky a delicate pink, Poletes's breathing suddenly quickened and he made a grab for the cloth covering his face. I was faster, and gripped his wrists before he could hurt himself.
"My lord Orion?" His voice was cracked and dry.
"Yes," I said. "Put your hands down at your sides. Don't reach for your eyes."
"Then it's true? It wasn't a nightmare?"
I held his head up slightly and gave him a sip of wine. "It is true," I said. "You are blind."
The moan he uttered would have wrenched the heart out of a marble statue.
"Agamemnon," he said, many moments later. "The mighty king took his vengeance on an old storyteller. As if that will make his wife faithful to him."
"Try to sleep," I said. "Rest is what you need."
He shook his head, and the cloth slid off, revealing the two raw burns where his eyes had been. I went to replace the cloth, saw that it was getting dry, and smeared more poultice on it from the bowl at my side.
"You might as well slit my throat, Orion. I'll be of no use to you now. No use to anyone."
"There's been enough blood spilled here," I said.
"No use," he muttered as I put the soothing cloth over the place where his eyes had been. Then I propped his head up again and gave him more wine. Soon he fell asleep again.
Lukka stuck his head into the tent. "My lord, King Odysseus wants to see you."
I ducked out into the morning sunshine. Commanding Lukka to have a man stand watch over the sleeping Poletes, I walked over to Odysseus's boat and clambered up the rope ladder that dangled over its curving hull.
The deck was heaped with treasure looted from Troy. I turned from the dazzling display to look back at the city. Hundreds of tiny figures were up on the battlements, pulling down its blackened stones, working under the hot sun to level the walls that had defied the Achaians for so long.
I had to step carefully along the gunwale to avoid tripping over the piles of treasure covering the deck. Odysseus was
at his usual place on the afterdeck, standing in the bright sunshine, his broad chest bare, his hair and beard still wet from his morning swim, a pleased smile on his thickly bearded face.
Yet his eyes searched mine as he said, "The victory is complete, thanks to you, Orion." Pointing at the demolition work going on in the distance, "Troy will never rise again."
I nodded grimly. "Priam, Hector, Aleksandros—the entire House of Ilios has been wiped out."
"All but Aeneas the Dardanian. Rumor had it that he was a bastard of Priam's. We haven't found his body."
"He might have been burned in the fire."
"It's possible," said Odysseus. "But I don't think he's terribly important. If he lives, he's hiding somewhere nearby. We'll find him. Even if we don't, there won't be anything left here for him to return to."
As I watched, one of the massive stones of the parapet by the Scaean gate was pulled loose by a horde of men straining with levers and ropes. It tumbled down to the ground with a heavy cloud of dust. Moments later I heard the thump.
"Apollo and Poseidon won't be pleased at what's being done to their walls."
Odysseus laughed. "Sometimes the gods have to bow to the will of men, Orion, whether they like it or not."
"You're not afraid of their anger?"
"If they didn't want us to pull down the walls, we wouldn't be able to do it."
I wondered. The gods are subtler than men, and have longer memories. I knew that Apollo was angry with me. How would his anger display itself?
"It's your turn to select your treasure from the spoils of the city," Odysseus said. He gestured toward a large pile of loot at the stern of the boat. "Take one-fifth of everything you see."
I thanked him, and spent an hour or so picking through the stuff. I selected blankets, armor, clothing, weapons, helmets, and jewels that could be traded for food and shelter.
