“Nothing. You’re drunk, Achilles.”
Leaning back on his hands, Achilles studied Patrokles’ indifference. He wouldn’t let him off the hook so easily. “I should have killed Briseis the day I captured her in Lyrnessus. Then none of this would be happening. We might have been halfway way home by now.”
“I don’t understand you. Just take her back. Is your glory worth her life? Her happiness? How can you say you love her as a wife and let her languish as she is? Odysseus would kill any man who stood between himself and Penelope. Even Agamemnon. What you feel isn’t love. It is twisted and selfish.”
Patrokles’ words stung. He knew he was not worthy of Briseis or her love. The struggle had always been the same. He was made for war, not love. “We both know who I am. What I am. I have never pretended to be other than what you see. Maybe, she is better off with someone else … you, perhaps?”
Lifting his face to Achilles, Patrokles revealed nothing of his inner turmoil. His friendship with Achilles filled what felt like half his life. He no longer wished to argue, when death swept so close to all of them. “If Hektor breaches the barricades in the coming days, none of this will matter to any of us. We will be nothing more than shades roaming the Underworld wishing we’d had more time.” Patrokles stood. “I leave you to your wine. It is good, Achilles, to hear you do have your wits about you.”
“Tell Briseis …” Achilles’ voice trailed to silence.
Patrokles waited. “What? Tell her what?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Achilles waved his hand as if shooing a fly. “Never mind.”
✽✽✽
Loneliness was a cruel companion for Briseis. She found her mind preoccupied with the life she had before Achilles. The prophecy of her birth, that she’d marry the greatest warrior, had driven her parents, especially her mother, to solidify her betrothal to Hektor. It felt like a dream now. How her mother had wept when Hektor married Andromache from the south. It was ironic how close she came to being on the other side of Troy’s Great Wall.
But she married Mynes and had a beautiful daughter, Phila. She would have been a woman married by now. Briseis closed her eyes and willed an image of Phila’s sweet face to rise from the ashes of her memory. But she found she couldn’t hold it for but a brief moment. It had been so long ago …
“Briseis,” Patrokles whispered at the back of her tent.
She pressed her ear to the tent wall. “What is it, Patrokles? Why do you stay away?”
“You know why, Briseis. Take this.” He stuffed a rolled papyrus and charcoal beneath the tent. “Remind Achilles what is between you both.”
Briseis’ heart sank. “What has happened?”
“He rejected Agamemnon’s offer to return you unharmed.”
“Why? Why would he do that?”
“Only he knows all the reasons. Promise me, you will do as I ask.”
“I promise.”
“I will come before the dawn and take your message to him.”
“Patrokles?”
“Aye?”
“I miss you,” Briseis whispered and pressed her hand against the heavy cloth wall. Patrokles pressed his hand to hers from his side. Then, he was gone.
AGAMEMNON’S CAMP
TWENTY FIVE, thieves in the night
1238 BCE
“Have you seen the fires?” Agamemnon stared at Odysseus, Diomedes, and Ajax. “There are thousands of them. Scouts report that even the distant walls are lit up. How are the Trojans multiplying before our eyes?” Neither man uttered a word. “Tell me what Achilles said. Is he going to fight with us?”
“No,” Odysseus said. “Not until Hektor’s forces reach the Myrmidon camp.”
Agamemnon paced his tent, clenching and unclenching his fists. He hated Achilles more than any man in the army. He secretly wished Achilles would sail home. Then, they would figure out some way to destroy Troy without him. Prophecy be damned. “I should have known that disrespectful dog would refuse my offering. What else did he say?”
Odysseus said, “He suggests you figure out what you’re going to do. He intends to sail home tomorrow. He suggests we all do the same.”
Diomedes chimed in, “Achilles has too much pride for his own good. What does it matter if he stays or goes? We should all rest. In the morning, we should take up this battle.”
Agamemnon’s face soured, his exasperation evident. “You told him I have not touched his woman? About marrying my daughter?”
Odysseus looked at his feet. They needed washing. He recalled how Penelope would wash his feet after a long day in the field, and how such intimacy led to other pleasures. “Aye, we told him everything.”
“How can he refuse my generosity?”
“He brought up … Aulis,” Odysseus didn’t want to say it, but there was no way around it. Achilles would not take a daughter of Agamemnon’s to wife for a ship full of gold and silver. Because of Iphigenia.
Agamemnon acquiesced for the moment. “There is nothing to be done now. You may leave.”
✽✽✽
Sleep eluded Agamemnon. The mention of Aulis started the wheels of regret turning over and over in his mind. Had there been a clear and swift victory over the Trojans and heaps of gold and geras abounded, he could stare that terrible day’s images down into the darkness. However, there had been no certain victory, and they now faced returning home as defeated cowards.
He threw off his linen blankets, grabbed his cape, and slid on his sandals. He ventured out into his camp. In the distance, the Trojan fires still burned brightly against the night. Walking among the tents, he heard men debating the day’s events around dying embers and the muffled sounds of those choosing to lay with women over talking. At the edge of his camp, he found Menelaus staring off into the direction of the Trojan’s camp.
“I should have realized you’d be here, as well.”
“Why is that, brother?” Menelaus asked.
“You have the most to lose, if we are defeated tomorrow.”
“You mean Helen?”
“Aye. You will have lost your wife and your dignity.”
Not a single day passed that Menelaus hadn’t been reminded of his unique troubles regarding Helen. Men snickered and women whispered when he strode passed them. Not even a bastard son had relieved him of this particular humiliation. “What’s the plan, brother?”
Agamemnon pulled his cape tighter about his broad shoulders. “Zeus is deaf to our plight. My bones and heart are certain of his indifference. Hektor has us pinned at the beach. At dawn, I have no doubt he will try to burn us out of any passage home.”
“Should we do as Achilles suggested? Should we sail home? Or do we stay and fight? Die in the end.” Menelaus rubbed his hands together against the growing night chill. “Have you ever wondered what would happen if all this comes to nothing?”
The Great King stood in silence for a long while. “No.” It was a lie. “We fight in the morning. We defend our camp to the bitter end. Death may be the only way I will ever have peace.”
“Maybe you should send scouts to the Trojan’s camp.”
“Why would I do that?”
“There may be something to learn, some element of surprise we might make that will turn the odds in our favor.”
Agamemnon clapped his younger brother on the shoulder. “Not a bad idea.” Clasping his hands behind his back, he said, “I know just who to send.”
✽✽✽
The mournful cry of an owl sounded near Odysseus. “Athena is with us,” he whispered over his shoulder to Ajax. “Dawn approaches.”
They crept along in the dark, zigzagging carefully through the corpses from the previous day’s battle. There had not been time enough to gather all the dead. Those that remained with their arms and legs twisted and bent unnaturally had begun to stiffen and stink. A flash of bronze in the moonlight caught Odysseus’ eye. “Get down, Diomedes,” he whispered harshly. “Someone approaches.”
Crouching low, they pulled dead bodies o
ver them like blankets. A lone man passed near them. When the footsteps grew distant, Odysseus said, “Must be a Trojan spy.”
Diomedes agreed, “Aye. No doubt.”
Together, they stalked the unsuspecting man heading straight for the Greek ships. The anticipation of wringing the spy’s neck surged through Odysseus. He signaled for Diomedes to circle around their intended victim.
Within a few quick steps, Odysseus was behind the man with a blade pressed to his throat and his free hand smashed against the man’s mouth. “Don’t make a sound.”
The man’s neck strained against the sharp edge of the knife and his eyes bulged in their sockets. When Diomedes’ giant frame appeared from behind a tangle of bushes, the man squealed into Odysseus’ hand over his mouth.
“Do you know our tongue?” Odysseus asked
The man slowly nodded.
“What’s you name?”
“D‒Dolon.” His body shook in fear, while he pissed down his leg.
“Where are you going in such a rush?”
“Please. D-Don’t kill me. I have a wife and children. My father. H-He has gold and bronze for a ransom. I am his only s-son.”
“What are you doing out here in the middle of the night? Stealing armor off dead bodies? Or spying for Hektor?”
“Hektor offered a reward to anyone who brought news of the Greek’s plans.”
Odysseus and Diomedes looked at each other. Odysseus mouthed, ‘Athena,’ to Diomedes, who nodded.
Odysseus pressed the trembling Trojan. “Where’s Hektor’s tent? How many guards are posted? Does he sleep or is he making plans for the morning?”
“Hektor is with his advisors. We watch the perimeter.”
“What about the allies? Are they camped or did they return to the city?”
“In camp. Asleep. Only Trojans do not sleep.”
“That makes it easier,” Diomedes said.
“Please,” Dolon begged, “leave me here. Let them find me bound and disgraced in the morning.”
A low, wicked laugh escaped Diomedes’ mouth. “So you can escape and try again to spy or kill us?”
Dolon put his hands up to protest, but Diomedes’ blade glinted faintly in the dark, slicing through tendons and bone. Dolon’s head hung gorily dripping blood in Odysseus’ hand, which was now clenching the dead man’s hair.
“A little warning next time,” Odysseus said, tossing the head to the ground where it thudded like wet clay. “Fuck these Trojans.”
The thrill of killing flooded through Odysseus and Diomedes, as they entered the unsuspecting camp Dolon had stumbled from. Creeping into tent after tent, they slit men’s throats while they slept. They gathered as much armor as they could steal from the dead. Bloodied and laughing, they headed back to report to Agamemnon.
✽✽✽
Odysseus washed the blood from his hands and stared at the red tinted water swirling in the bronze basin. Who have I become? He thought of Penelope back home. Gentle Penelope. The young woman he convinced to marry him, so shy she stood behind a pillar when Helen danced for all the suitors. She had blushed so sweetly, he thought his heart would burst. How will she ever love the killer I’ve become? How can I hold her innocence in these filthy hands? He splashed the water through his hair to wash the blood out. I know more of killing than of making love now.
AGAMEMNON’S CAMP
TWENTY SIX, where heroes fall
1238 BCE
Pale dawn bled across the heavens, mirroring the death and destruction below. The Goddess of Strife, on a mission from Zeus, cried out into the crisp morning air, urging the Greeks to forget their homelands and fight.
Agamemnon wiped the sleep from his swollen eyes. He stared up at the gently billowing tented roof. His body ached in every joint. “Age is closing in on me with every rise of Apollo.” Slowly, he sat up and stretched. When his leg touched something, he glanced to his side. He’d forgotten about her. “You.” He kicked at the sleeping slave woman. “Get out.”
Without a word, the woman gathered her clothes and disappeared through the tent slit.
Rising from his bed, he thought of Briseis. She was what he truly wanted. To plow her deeply like a yoked beast plowing a field just to prove to Achilles he could. He grabbed his piss pot, but his cock had its mind on the fucking not relieving his bladder. “Fucking, Hades.” He shook it. “Come on, damn it.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The image of Achilles rose up with eyes boring holes of hate and murder right through him. A thin stream sounded against the pottery. “Thank the gods.”
Menelaus called from outside the tent. “Brother?”
“Enter.”
“The men await you. They are ready to face whatever the day may bring.”
Agamemnon scratched at the matted hair between his legs. He walked to the low table where the wash basin sat, and splashed water on his now flaccid member. “How do you judge the men?”
“They are ready to fight. More ready to go home.”
Agamemnon continued to dress, pulling on a fresh tunic and slipping into his sandals. “Help me with these buckles.”
Menelaus lifted his brother’s breast plate jingling with bronze rings. He secured the leather straps over Agamemnon’s shoulders and at his sides. “You have grown thinner.”
Agamemnon laughed. “You lie. I know they call me the ‘fat king’ behind my back.”
“I only meant—”
“No matter. The greaves.” He sat waiting for his brother to strap them over his calves. “I have hope the day will turn in our favor.”
Lifting his brother’s meaty leg, Menelaus secured one greave, then the other.
After rising from his seat, Agamemnon strapped on his sword and grabbed his ash spear on the way out of his tent. Menelaus followed close behind him. “May the gods be with us.”
Menelaus added, “And against the Trojans.”
✽✽✽
From the bow of his ship, Achilles watched the cloud of dust rise in the distance, signally the initial clash of arms. He grabbed an amphora of wine and jumped from the rail to the shallow surf inching up the shore. The sand was firm and wet beneath his bare feet. He couldn’t remember when he had last walked the camp.
Myrmidon shields stacked one against the other formed a short, black wall weaving through their camp. It brought relief to be in the crisp air walking among his men. As he passed by, they nodded and gave greetings but no one dared approach him. Once, he could be found among them, breaking bread and drinking wine, but the whispers of his foul temper kept them away now.
He made his way to the shore, hoping his mother might appear. Or Patrokles. The sea was calm, so Thetis was away. Her voice in his head was silent. He knew where Patrokles would be, so he made his way in that direction. More than a few startled faces greeted him as he wove through the camp, making his way to the edge where the sick and wounded were taken. Stray dogs barked as he passed, and young children oblivious to his mood circled him, questioning him as he walked.
“Achilles,” they whispered, “it’s Achilles!”
But he ignored them all. Eventually, they trailed off, disheartened and disappointed that they had failed to engage his attention.
Achilles peered into several tents before finding Patrokles, who was tending a man with a nasty gash across the back of his head. He stood for several moments watching Patrokles remove small pieces of rock from the man’s scalp with a thin blade.
“What do you need, Achilles?” Patrokles asked without looking over his shoulder.
“What do you know about the fighting?”
“We’ve gained the upper hand. Agamemnon fights boldly. Uncharacteristic, I know. He has his men stripping the Trojan dead naked.”
“Defiling the dead. There will be consequences.”
Patrokles threw the filthy cloth in his hands into the clay basin. Water splashed over the edge onto the instruments next to it. “You are shocked? Why? You have done worse. I can remind you—”
Achilles
sharply cut him off, “I know what I have done. What more do you hear?”
“Agamemnon was struck in the arm by a spear and carried off the field. Diomedes managed to get a good hacking at Hektor’s helm, but Paris shot an arrow into his foot. Odysseus helped him uncork himself from the ground, but then he, too, was surrounded by the enemy. He suffered several wounds, before Menelaus and Ajax helped him escape. Last I heard Ajax was slaying the Trojans in all directions like a madman.” His hands worked deftly, wrapping his patient’s head. His fingers paused. “Nestor is wounded. That’s all I know.”
“That is quite a lot of information for someone not engaged in the battle itself.”
Patrokles patted the wounded man’s shoulder. “You should lie down for a while. Rest.” Turning to Achilles, he said, “I am surrounded by information from the field. So are all the Myrmidons. You’re the one who chooses not to know anything.”
“Until now.”
“Until now,” Patrokles said tersely.
“Agamemnon and most of his valued commanders do not fight. Maybe the fat king will humble himself and realize his mistake with me. Menelaus and Ajax, do they still fight?”
Patrokles paused, looking at Achilles as if he were a stranger. “Cousin, for many seasons I thought I knew you. But in recent days, you are practically a stranger to me. To the Myrmidons.”
Achilles crossed his arms over his chest. “The blood tie. I hear your reproach without the words actually falling from your lips.”
Patrokles glared at Achilles, saying nothing.
“Have you seen her?”
“Aye. I have.” Patrokles stood to leave. “I’m going to check on Nestor. You can join me, if you like.”
Achilles’ temper simmered just beneath the surface. It had been too long without wine to tame it properly. He had no patience left to endure a scolding by the old man. “No. See to him and send word to me of any news you might discover.”
Rage of Queens (Homeric Chronicles Book 3) Page 22
