by Ben Blake
*
They were taken outside. The street was full of captives, most of them tied together in lines of five or ten people, many injured. Bodies were scattered along the road, and formed a largish heap at the far end, where it ran through the wall. Many of the dead were young, hardly more than children, though all of those were boys. A different fate awaited the girls.
Men in black armour moved among the corpses, checking them. Now and then one stabbed down with spear or sword and an arm twitched once, then was still. Some of those bodies must belong to men Balzer had known, and worked alongside: or women they had married, who had looked after his children when he and Didia needed time to themselves. He did his best not to look at them but sometimes his eyes fell on a face he knew, however he tried.
The prisoners were led to the town square. Stalls from the day’s market still stood in the agora, though most had ripped canvas or overturned tables, and wares smashed on the ground. Other townsfolk were there already, filling the small plaza almost completely. They’d been tied in lines like cattle for sale. Balzer supposed that’s what they were, now. He looked for familiar faces and found some. Not many. Not enough.
It had been so quick. One moment the town was quiet, its normal sedentary self, and the next black-garbed warriors were thundering up the road. Anyone unlucky enough to be in the fields had been cut down, except a few of the fastest runners. They’d come hurtling over the ditch barely ahead of the raiders, and by then it was too late to close the gate.
Balzer had seen that much, and known at once there was no hope. There were too many of the attackers – Argives, they had to be, nobody else made raids like this – and too few defenders. Only some forty townsfolk had reached the gate by the time the raiders crashed came crashing in. Balzer should have been one of them. He’d stopped to make sure his children were hidden, and found there wasn’t even enough time for that.
“Balzer,” a man in the next line said. It was Chilbu, a carpenter from one street over. “How did they do it? I never heard the tocsin.”
“It didn’t ring,” Balzer said tiredly. He felt empty, hollowed out. The words tore his throat as they emerged from it. “They came overland. I saw them come out of the wood beyond the north fields.”
“Papa,” Išbardia said, her voice very small.
He couldn’t look at her. There was nothing he could say, no comfort he could offer her. He’d have scrambled for his sword and let Eudorus spit him like a dog if it would save his children, any of them, but he knew it wouldn’t have done. The tears were close now and he fought them, taking deep breaths of the warm air and blinking at the sky.
“Here he is,” Eudorus said, not far behind him.
There was something in the Greek’s voice that made Balzer turn around to see. A note of excitement, even in the midst of this carnage and despair. He looked down the street towards the gate.
A man was coming towards them, bigger than Eudorus but seeming almost dainty, stepping like a dancer between the bodies. Where the other raiders wore black armour his shone like gold, and his hair was scarcely less bright. He was very big, tall and broad as well, which made his light-footed movement seem strange, like an auroch skipping.
“Achilles,” Eudorus said.
Balzer felt a fool. He should have realised who led the raiders from the moment he saw the black armour. Achilles and the Myrmidons were known across the Greensea, pirates who struck and struck again and never lost, no matter where they appeared. They had raided Samos, and seemed to strike along the Thracian coast every summer more or less at will: the Thracians had no ships and little organisation, and were easy prey. Two or three years ago the Myrmidons had attacked the coast of Egypt itself, smashing their way into a town outside Rosetta and making off with a fortune in worked gold.
They even attacked Argives. Under Achilles the Myrmidons played no favourites, except perhaps that they didn’t raid the Greek mainland itself. But they had raided Rhodes, at least twice that Blazer had heard of, and were accused of the same in Crete, whose long coastline made it especially vulnerable to seaborne raids. King Idomeneus had supposedly threatened to feed Achilles’ body to the dogs if he ever caught him. Because Achilles was at the heart of it all, the reason the Myrmidons still devastated coasts and sailed away laden with plunder, when the rest of the Argives hardly did so anymore. Greek kings had begun to protect their own lands rather than raiding against others’. The world was not what it had been.
Except for the warriors in black. And everywhere they went, they took prisoners and sold them into slavery, earning even more wealth as they did.
“Numbers?” Achilles asked. His voice was surprisingly soft.
“We could take six hundred captives if we wanted to,” Eudorus said. “Not that we have room for them all.”
“Or could sell them all,” a new voice said. It came from a man almost as tall as Achilles, striding to join them across the agora. Balzer thought he looked almost feminine, with his blond hair and a chin that looked as though it had never needed a shave. “We’d have to sail the Greensea for weeks to be rid of them all, unless we sold them for coppers.”
These are lives! Balzer wanted to shout. We are people, with our own plans and our own loves. Not things, to be bought and sold. But the world was cruel, it had always been cruel, and the Fates wouldn’t listen to one mortal’s pleas. He felt one of the boys’ hand slip into his and gripped it hard.
“Pick out two hundred,” Achilles ordered. “Choose the best, Patroclus. We’ll leave the others here.”
“Just leave them?” the androgynous man asked.
“Sacking a town is good,” Achilles said. “Burning it to nothing isn’t. If we let them rebuild there will still be something here for us to raid again, twenty years from now. Start checking the houses for treasures and send word to the ships; it’s time they moved around to the strand here. I want everything loaded and the hulls back out at sea before –””
He broke off. For the second time Balzer felt that brittle something in the air, and again he couldn’t help but look.
Achilles was staring at Išbardia. Goggling at her, in fact, as though he’d been struck to the heart and couldn’t tear himself away. Balzer turned his head and saw his daughter staring back, with the same intent expression on her face. Something inside him plunged queasily.
“In the name of Aphrodite,” Achilles said at last. “The Shining One sends us fair wind and calm seas, when we voyage. I did not expect her to also send such beauty as yours. What are you called?”
“Išbardia,” she said. The small, shocked tone was gone, replaced by a strength Balzer hadn’t expected, or heard from her before.
“Išbardia,” the golden man repeated. He smiled brilliantly. “Išbardia. A lovely name. I am Achilles.”
“I know who you are,” she said.
He nodded. “Of course you do. Everyone on the shores of the sea knows the name of Achilles.”
There was unmistakeable pride in his tone, but Išbardia stood very straight and looked him in the eye, without a hint of fear. “As a plunderer. As a stealer of lives and a wrecker of towns. Only that.”
“What else should a warrior be known for?” He seemed genuinely bemused. “Men know my name. I can ask no more.”
Išbardia said nothing to that, merely studied him, but she still carried the earlier flush in her cheeks. Balzer didn’t like that, but he couldn’t see what he could do about it. Everyone in the agora had fallen silent to listen. Behind Achilles his two captains, Eudorus and Patroclus, exchanged glances of what Balzer thought was weary resignation. He didn’t understand that at all.
“Will you come with me?” Achilles asked.
She didn’t blink. “As what? Your slave?”
“My companion,” Achilles said.
Balzer took a small step forward, all the ropes allowed him without dragging others in his wake. He stopped even before Eudorus and Patroclus cut their eyes towards him, at precisely the same instant. There was nothi
ng he could do to stop this, and anyway it would be better than any other possibility open to Išbardia now. She’d know that, of course. She had never been a fool, any more than her mother had been.
“My family goes free?” she asked.
Achilles gestured to his men. Patroclus came forward and cut the ropes at Balzer’s wrists, then his sons’. He smiled slightly as he stepped away. “The gods are with you today, townsman.”
He supposed they were. His wife murdered in front of him, his daughter lost to an outland barbarian, and it was his lucky day. He still had two sons, and they were free. He could feel the envy of the other captives as they glared at him. “But you’re not happy.”
For a moment Patroclus looked startled, and then the smile returned. He lowered his voice. “Achilles has his fancies. They blow hot for a month, or half a year, and then his passion turns elsewhere and the darling is forgotten. But she’ll not be left helpless, townsman. My word on it.”
The word of a raider and killer: that was not at all comforting. Balzer was suddenly sure, looking into Patroclus’ blue eyes, that he himself was one of the fancies who had been forgotten. It was hardly unknown for men to share love together, after all. For an instant they stared at each other, and then Patroclus turned and went back to the lines of Myrmidons.
Balzer turned to his daughter. She was already looking at him, her head held high. Achilles had come closer and stood a few paces away.
“I’m sorry,” Balzer said. It wasn’t enough. How could it be? It was his task to keep her safe, and yet she was about to leave everything she’d known to be the companion of a pirate. His bed girl, in short. Balzer tried to speak again and no words came out.
“You have no reason to be sorry,” Išbardia said. “You don’t control the world. If you did, Papa, I know I would have always been safe.”
“Let us know if you need us,” he said. She wouldn’t, of course. A woman on one side of the Aegean couldn’t send a message to the other, unless she was high born. And Išbardia couldn’t even write. Few people could.
“I will,” she promised. She came to him and held him tight, though only for a brief moment. Then she stepped back, and kneeling she held her arms out so her two brothers could go to her. They were both crying, even Hiram, who thought himself so strong. Balzer was glad to see it. They had lost their mother today, and now their sister, and the consolation of their own freedom and safety seemed a small return for that.
At length Išbardia eased the boys away and stood up. Achilles came and took her arm, and then led her away down the body-strewn street, his hand gripping her just above the elbow. It reminded Balzer of the way a groom will lead a horse, his hand proprietorial and controlling. He watched her until she was out of sight, and when she vanished breath left him in a soft gasp.
“Papa?” Paltal asked.
He shook his head, not answering, and took the boys’ hands. Together they started towards the home now being looted by Myrmidons.
“Papa?” Paltal said again.
“Hush,” Balzer said. He was already thinking about what to take. There wasn’t much, really. Clothes would be most of it. Balzer could take his pack, and the boys could tie their cloaks into makeshift bundles, perhaps fastened to the end of a pole. They could manage.
“Papa?”
They’d need food, of course. There was a good bit in the pantry, assuming the Myrmidons didn’t take it all. Even if they did there would be fruit and berries in the high woods, and game to hunt besides. Balzer might not be any use with a sword, but he could use a sling.
“We’re leaving,” he told Paltal. The younger boy’s eyes were huge and terrified. “As soon as we can. You heard what the warrior said. They want us to rebuild just so they can raid us again, on another day.”
The Argives had raided half the world, but not the coast of Asia. Not since Miletos fifteen years ago, when the Hittites came and slaughtered every Greek they could find, a few years after the city had been taken in a raid. That had left the Argives afraid to try again. Now, it seemed, they were recovering their nerve. At least, Achilles was. That was enough.
“Where will we go?” Paltal asked tremblingly.
“Somewhere not even an Argive will raid,” Balzer said.
“Yes, but where?”
“Isn’t that obvious?” Hiram took his hand from his father’s and strode on ahead, turning to call back to his brother. “We’re going to Troy.”
