Fall of Kings

CHAPTER THIRTY THE ADVICE OF ODYSSEUS

Late on the second day a great cheer rose from the soldiers waiting patiently outside the walls for their comrades to break the Trojans’ barricade. The young healer Xander shivered in the hot afternoon as he watched the thousands of warriors rush in through the Scaean Gate.

He remembered the first time he had arrived in Troy, in a donkey cart with Odysseus and Andromache. He had been a child of twelve and had left his grandfather’s goat herd on Kypros to go on a great adventure. He had felt that same shiver of fear as the cart had trundled through the great gate and he first had glimpsed the city of gold with its bronze-roofed palaces, verdant courtyards, and richly dressed people.

He thought of his father, who had died fighting the Mykene pirate Alektruon, and Zidantas, who had been a father to him for a few brief days. He wondered what they would think of him now, giving aid and comfort to the armies of Agamemnon that were pouring into that city to rape, plunder, and kill.

He turned and walked slowly back to the barracks hospital. From beside his pallet bed he fetched his old leather satchel and delved in the bottom of it. He pulled out the two pebbles he had carried with him since he had left Kypros to remind him of home. He weighed them in his palm for a moment, then walked to the door and threw them out into the street. Then he started packing the satchel with his potions and herbs.

“Remember the advice of Odysseus, young Xander.”

The boy looked up and found the surgeon White-Eye standing beside him. He was watching anxiously as Xander carefully wrapped bunches of dried herbs in scraps of cloth and placed them in the satchel.

“Run to the bay, son,” the older man urged him. “Take ship to Kypros and return to your mother and grandfather. These people are past help now.”

“You are still here, White-Eye,” Xander answered, not looking up from his task, “though the Myrmidons have left.”

“Some of our ships are still loading their final cargo, mostly horses. When the last galley sets sail for Thessaly, I shall be on it. There is nothing we can do here, lad. Troy will be a charnel house full of death and horror. Walk through those gates and you will die; that is as certain as sunset follows day.”

Xander continued packing his bag. “I must help my friends,” he whispered.

“You make friends wherever you go, boy. It is your nature. I am your friend. Do this for your friend White-Eye.”

Xander paused. He turned to the man and said, “When I first came here, on the Xanthos, there was a great storm, and I nearly drowned. Two men saved my life—an Egypteian called Gershom and the Mykene hero Argurios. Both held on to me beyond the limits of their strength, at the risk of their own lives. They felt my life was worth saving, I don’t know why. I cannot explain it very well, White-Eye, but I would be letting them both down if I turned my back on the Trojans and ran home. I know I came here for a reason, even if it is one I don’t understand.”

White-Eye shook his head sadly. “I cannot argue with you, lad. The ways of the gods are unknowable. I do not know why the serpent god sent me here. I thought perhaps it was so that I would meet you and take you back to Thessaly. You have it in you to be a great healer, Xander, but your skills will be wasted if you throw away your life now.”

“I am sorry you did not meet your brother again before he died,” Xander said, anxious to change the subject. He feared his resolution would drain away.

“So am I, lad, but the truth is, Machaon and I never did get on. Though we look alike, we have very different ideas on the ways of the serpent god. We would probably have come to blows.”

Xander smiled at the idea of the two gentle healers circling each other with their fists cocked. For a few heartbeats he was tempted to go with the older man, to take ship to Thessaly and a new life far across the Great Green. But instead he said, “Remember me, White-Eye.”

White-Eye nodded, and Xander thought he saw tears in his eyes before he hurried away. Taking a deep breath, the young healer picked up his heavy satchel. It was just starting to rain as he walked up the hill toward the city.

When news came of the fall of the barricade, Andromache was installed in Priam’s palace, the last refuge. With her were the two boys and her youngest handmaid Anio.

On the day of Hektor’s death, when women and children had been allowed out of the city, Axa had left tearfully with her three babies, bound for Phrygia and the family of Mestares. She had begged the daughters of Ursos to go with her, but the sisters had refused, saying that their father had died defending the city and so would they. Andromache had made no effort to make them change their minds. She had told them she respected their decision, though privately her heart bled for their fate.

Then Penthesileia had gone to the barricade with the Thrakian archers. The boy-king Periklos had come to Andromache himself and asked that Penthesileia be released from her service. Andromache had been surprised, though she did not doubt the girl’s skill with the bow and was moved by her courage. As Penthesileia left with Periklos, Andromache was sure she would never see her again.

The great palace was empty. Priam was in his apartments, she was told, but she had not seen him. There were few servants, and even Andromache’s bodyguards had been ordered to the barricade. The boys were playing noisily, excited to be in a new home. Andromache felt frustrated by her confinement. She left the boys and walked down to the empty megaron.

She seldom had lingered in that great room in recent years. It held only memories of death and horror. On a whim she walked over to Priam’s carved, gold-encrusted throne and sat down. She looked around at the high stone walls decorated with the shields of heroes. The shield of Argurios was there, the shield of Hektor now beside it. She gazed at the great stairway where Argurios had been wounded fatally. The silence in the megaron echoed off the high stone walls, and the distant sound of clashing metal and shouting men seemed as thin and fragile as the twittering of birds on a summer afternoon.

She looked up at the shield of Hektor, and one hand fell to touch the belt around her hips. It was cunningly crafted of bronze disks threaded with gold wire, marking her as a Woman of the Horse.

For the first time in days she was alone, and in that great empty stone chamber she felt her control slipping. Tears started to roll down her cheeks. They called him the Prince of War, but she had never seen Hektor as a warrior, only a kind, compassionate man shouldering burdens that no man should have had to endure. She remembered that moment in the palace gardens when she had watched him playing in the dust with Astyanax, an expression of deep tenderness on his face that had wrenched her heart. She felt an agonizing stab of guilt—so physical that she doubled over from the pain—that she had never loved Hektor as he deserved, that he had gone to his death knowing she yearned not for him but for another man.

Then she wondered, as she did each day, where the Xanthos was and whether Helikaon still lived. Her traitor heart, one moment mourning Hektor, now ached for Helikaon. The blissful time she had spent with him, more than a hundred days, on their voyage west now seemed as though it had happened in another lifetime.

Sitting on the high golden throne, she wept for both of the men she loved.

Suddenly she started and swiped the tears from her cheeks. A young messenger, hardly more than a boy, raced in through the high doorway. He stopped, gawping to see her on Priam’s throne, and she stood up.

“The enemy have broken through, lady. They are coming!”

Andromache stood by the throne, feeling a tension that was almost unbearable. She knew she should be doing something, but she did not know what. Outside she heard the sound of distant thunder rolling over the sea.

After what seemed a lifetime of waiting, two soldiers staggered into the megaron, supporting a comrade. All three were injured, but the one in the middle was dying, she could see. Blood was pumping out of a deep gash in his leg, and she knew that a vital blood vessel had been torn.

“Take him to the queen’s apartments,” she ordered, pointing up the stone staircase. “We will care for the wounded there.” She wondered how many healers, if any, were still in the city.

Soon people started pouring in through the doors: wounded soldiers, old men, and a few women. There was fear and exhaustion on every face, and they all looked to her to tell them what to do. She sent the wounded to the queen’s apartments and ordered the women to tend to them as best they could. The men she set to work stripping the weaponry off the walls.

At last Polites arrived, looking ten years older than when she last had seen him two days before. His thin body was lost in someone else’s cavalry armor, and he pulled the high helm off with evident relief.

“The enemy has won the city,” he told her briefly. “Our generals believe they will not attack the palace until tomorrow, so we have time to prepare.”

“I have sent the wounded to the queen’s apartments,” she said. “There is some food and plenty of water in the kitchens. We need an armory.” She pointed to three women coming in with armfuls of spent arrows to be sorted through.

“Why are there still women here?” Polites asked with anguish. “Why did they not leave when they could?”

“For the same reason you did not, Polites,” Andromache replied. “They are Trojans who are prepared to stay and die for their city, like you. You could have left long ago, as Kreusa did. Or you could have fled in the days after the taking of King’s Joy. These women made the same decision you did. Respect them for it.”

“See that they stay within the palace,” Polites told her. “The city will be a place of horror tonight for anyone outside the palace walls. Agamemnon’s troops will be working off the frustrations of an idle summer. No one will be left alive.”

Andromache thought of her two boys. They were safe for the moment but would not be for long. Feeling panic rising in her breast, she ruthlessly pushed it down.

“Where is Polydorus?” she asked Polites briskly. “He should be here. He has planned the defense of the palace.”

“I saw him at the barricade,” he answered. “He is a soldier. He could not wait here doing nothing while the city was under attack.”

“Sometimes it is hardest just to wait and do nothing.” She felt anger replacing the rising panic. “Polydorus was charged with command of the palace. He has deserted his post—and his king.”

“You are being too harsh, Andromache,” Polites chided her. “Polydorus has always been a dutiful son of Troy. He found it frustrating looking after Father. His city is in danger. He is a soldier,” he repeated.

Andromache looked at him with surprise. “As a soldier,” she said scornfully, “his duty was to look after the king, not to fight in the streets. Any common soldier can do that. Polydorus was honored for his valiant part in the palace siege by being made the king’s aide, Priam’s bodyguard. He has now abandoned the king. How can you defend him, Polites?”

Frowning, he answered, “Sometimes there is a higher duty, Sister, a duty to one’s conscience.”

Andromache took a deep breath and sighed. “I am sorry, Polites. I should not be arguing with you. It is getting dark, and I must say good night to my boys. Then, if Polydorus has not returned, we will get together and make our own plans. Perhaps the generals will be here by then.”

She hurried up the stone staircase, feeling her heart beating noisily. Ruefully she admitted to herself that fear for her boys had expressed itself as anger. In the queen’s apartments she made her way to the boys’ bedchamber. Anio was not to be seen. Then she remembered she had told the girl to find cloth to make bandages. She found little Dex on his own, sitting on the floor playing with his favorite toy, a battered wooden horse with blue eyes he had brought from Dardanos.

She looked around, then squatted down with the boy.

“Where is Astyanax?” she asked him, pushing his fair fringe back off his face.

“He went with the man,” the child said, handing her the toy to play with.

She frowned, and a trickle of dread entered her heart. She heard again the distant sound of thunder. “What man, Dex?”

“The old man took him,” he told her.