A Song of War, page 31
Only Philoctetes had stayed by his side until the hard and horrible end. Philoctetes had built a pyre to send that invincible hero’s smoke up to the gods. He’d helped Heracles climb atop it and lay down at his side to hold his friend and comfort him until death finally released him. And when finally the hero’s suffering ended, Philoctetes had lit the pyre and walked away.
But before he’d expired, Heracles had taken a key from a string around his neck and pressed it into Philoctetes’ hand. Back at Heracles’ hunting tent, abandoned by the servants, silent as a tomb, Philoctetes had found a locked chest. Inside the chest was his friend’s favorite bow: plain, polished horn, simple and serviceable. Exactly what a bow ought to be.
It was a good bow, and Philoctetes, with his lifelong love of archery, knew how to appreciate its craftsmanship, how to use it well. It had been his pride during his free days, during those months of summer when he had ached with the blissful pain of love and dared not confess his longing to anyone. He had only told a few people how he’d acquired the bow. Only his dearest friends.
He swallowed hard, holding Agamemnon’s stare, and when he spoke, his voice was hoarse and gravelly. “How did you know that I have the bow of Heracles?”
“I told them.” A voice from behind him at the tent’s entrance. A voice he hadn’t heard in ten years, but still he recognized it on the instant. It sent fire through his veins and squeezed his heart with a merciless fist.
Philoctetes turned. Achilles stood in the lamplight, gazing at him steadily, his face devoid of all expression but somehow still tinged by weariness and grief. His hair tumbled in waves toward his shoulders; what had once been the wisps of a boy’s beard had thickened to the full, rough shadow of manhood on his exquisitely sharp and strong jaw. The smell of dust and sweat and summer heat struck Philoctetes like a blow, though it was only a memory—only a memory. His disbelieving gaze fell to Achilles’ hand, hanging loosely at his side. All the softness of youth was gone; the skin was callused and cracked and hardened by war. And there was no red welt on his knuckle. Of course there was not.
But it was Achilles—it was Achilles.
Philoctetes heard Agamemnon’s voice, muffled by the pounding of his own heart in his ears. “So will you fight for us, then?”
He didn’t tear his eyes from Achilles’ face—couldn’t have done it, even if he’d wanted to. But he answered Agamemnon without hesitation.
“Yes, I’ll fight for you. However I can.”
PENTHESILEA
Penthesilea woke in late in the afternoon—or perhaps she didn’t wake at all. Ever since Hippolyte’s death, sleep had mostly evaded her, and when it came, it was shallow and fleeting, laced with dark dreams and haunted by the sound of her sister’s final breaths.
She rolled over on her cot, its frame creaking, and stood on legs that trembled from grief and exhaustion. Her stomach felt hollow and sick at the same time. In all the days since she’d arrived in Troy—half a moon’s turn, now—she had eaten very little and drank only when Helen demanded that she take water or diluted wine sweetened with plenty of fortifying honey. Her appetite was small; there was no room inside her for anything but sorrow, no matter how Helen chided her to eat, arguing that a trembling, stick-thin warrior would do her no good when the time came to fight. Who knew when that would be; there had been no fighting at all since Penthesilea had arrived two weeks ago. All Troy seemed too sunk in stillness to venture outside the great gates, even for a raid.
The cot was set into a small servant’s alcove in a corner of Helen’s great chamber. Penthesilea lingered behind the alcove’s curtain, listening. There was no murmur of women’s voices in Helen’s quarters, no cries or accusations from Andromache, whose eyes were still red whenever Penthesilea saw her. There was only the slow, resigned clacking of the loom.
She pulled the curtain aside. Helen stood at her loom on the far side of the chamber, her straight and slender back to Penthesilea, passing the shuttle slowly through a forest of white threads.
“Awake?” Helen asked in that remarkable voice—carrying, strong and smooth, but never loud. She did not look around.
“Yes,” Penthesilea said.
“Good. The gods know I could stand some company.”
Penthesilea went to her, padding across the chamber in her bare feet. She wasn’t used to moving in such absolute silence, but she had taken all the ornaments out of her hair, all the discs of silver and shell. She was in mourning, and the bright music of their movement was unsuited to her grief. She would be in mourning forever.
Penthesilea looked over Helen’s shoulder at the cloth growing slowly on the loom. Surely, even a slave girl could have done better. There were slubs in the fabric, and the pattern of keys and suns had broken here and there. It was careless work—distracted work. Helen was capable of doing much better, but the woman’s sigh as she passed the shuttle again, her distant stare out her chamber window into the sun-beaten garden, told Penthesilea that all effort and care were beyond Helen now.
“Your maids, my lady?” Penthesilea asked.
Usually the talk and laughter of Helen’s servants made weaving more bearable for her, carrying her sharp mind away from the drudgery of the task. But Helen sighed in the silence.
“I sent them away. They’re fools; I can’t abide their mindless chatter today. There’s fresh water in the ewer, though. Drink. You won’t be any use as my personal warrior if you die of thirst. Or starvation. You’ll be sure to eat well tonight, won’t you?”
Her tone was cool and detached, but Penthesilea had known her cousin long enough now to hear the subtle note of concern. She gave a tiny smile of gratitude for Helen’s care.
“I will, if it will please you.”
“Excellent. Though I still don’t know what I’m to do with my own sworn Amazon. At least you are a novelty. There’s precious little novelty in Troy anymore.”
The shuttle passed through the threads again.
Penthesilea poured a cup of water and drank. The water was cool and sweet; it felt good in her throat. She’d been thirstier than she knew. She drank another cup while Helen watched with approval.
“Look at me,” Helen burst out suddenly. An unexpected bitterness tinted her voice. Helen rarely showed any emotion, even when Penthesilea was sure it was rippling under her cool surface like wind across the grass. “Look at me. Weaving. I hate weaving. It was all I did back in Sparta. I swore when I left that place that I’d never touch a shuttle again, that I’d burn any loom they put in front of me. Yet here I am, doing it anyway, after all these years. What else am I to do?”
Penthesilea leaned against the windowsill, her back to the garden, watching her cousin and waiting. More was coming; she was sure of that.
Helen stared past Penthesilea, out into the garden with its laurel tree and its dappled shade. But she seemed to see nothing except the private images that tumbled through her memory.
“I wonder,” she said, and now her voice was not smooth and grand. It was small and cracked, very nearly broken. “Does my daughter weave?”
“I remember your daughter well,” Penthesilea said. She remembered, too, the blankness in King Menelaus of Sparta’s eyes when she had congratulated him on the good fortune of having a daughter. Achaeans did not value daughters as Cimmerians did. “She was lively and red-haired. A pretty little girl.”
“Little, yes. She’s not a little girl any longer. All this time, I’ve tried to send for her. So has Priam. We’ve offered riches Menelaus could hardly refuse. But he did refuse—turned us down every time. All to spite me—only to spite me.”
Helen drew a long, shaking breath. When she spoke again, she was calm, composed. “Hermione is fifteen now. Ready to marry, and she would be married, no doubt, if her father weren’t off at war.”
“Perhaps she enjoys the maiden’s life,” Penthesilea offered.
“Yes.” A quiet laugh, wry and self-deprecating. “Would that we were all so lucky to avoid marriage and remain free.” The shuttle moved again in her delicate white hands. “Still, I wonder if she weaves.”
Penthesilea helped herself to another cup of water. “Would you want her to weave, my lady? If you despise it so?”
She didn’t look up from her loom, but one corner of Helen’s mouth curled, and those sea-gray eyes sharpened. “Since when does it matter what a woman wants? We all end up in drudgery, one way or another. I suppose it’s all the gods made us for, after all. Even me, Zeus’s own daughter.” She set the shuttle in its holder and picked at the skewed threads of her tapestry. “One would think the daughter of a god could manage to weave like Arachne. Apparently not.”
“You’re only distracted, my lady. This war—”
Helen cut her off abruptly, shaking her pale gold curls. “This war. This war like every other war.”
Not exactly like every other war, Penthesilea thought soberly. It has dragged on for nearly ten bloody years. But she knew better than to say such a thing to Helen.
“What is the point of war?” Helen asked.
Penthesilea knew she was not meant to answer. There was no good answer she could give anyway. She knew the point of battle in her homeland. Among Cimmerians, raids brought honor and opportunity—the chance to raid in return, to raise the honor of one’s family ever higher, like a banner against the sky. But what indeed was the purpose of this endless conflict? The king of Sparta would have said the purpose was to win Helen back. But any king with a speck of sense would have declared Helen unfaithful and unworthy—would have taken another wife, less beautiful but also less troublesome.
What was the purpose of war in Troy, in the Achaean lands? Where was the honor in years of deaths, in an endless siege? Penthesilea gazed out over the garden toward the wall of Troy beyond. There were children in that city who had never known a world without fighting, who could never recall a time when their home was not besieged.
“This curse has followed me all my life,” Helen said, joining Penthesilea at the garden window. A warm breeze lifted the scent of herbs from the beds, a soothing fragrance. Helen seemed not to notice.
“What curse, my lady?”
“Womanhood.” She pressed her lips tightly together. For a moment, Penthesilea wondered if Helen would spit out the window. “What I wouldn’t have given to be born a Cimmerian like you. Women are more in your land, aren’t they?”
“More?”
“Yes. More than spoils—treasure. More than prizes to be won. All my life, I’ve been a pretty little bauble, something to be haggled over, something to be stolen. First, when I was merely a child, then again when the suitors came for me. And here I am, languishing at Troy, where I thought I could be free—where I thought women could be more than just spoils. But I am still the prize. Nothing has changed.”
Penthesilea bit her lip. She cast an uneasy glance at Helen from the corner of her eye. There was truth in her words—there was nothing but truth. Penthesilea could offer no comforting denial.
A tap sounded at the door, startling both women out of their bleak reverie. “Come,” Helen called.
Penthesilea expected a slave or two, bearing wine or a meal. Instead, it was Helen’s husband, Paris, who entered. Penthesilea had seen little of him since she’d arrived in Troy, for Helen kept to herself whenever she could, and Penthesilea remained close by her side. For all that he was Helen’s husband, Paris seldom passed his time in these rooms.
The prince of Troy was as finely formed as a statue, perfect in his proportions and gleaming with ornaments and fine white linen. His gleaming hair, wavy as the sea, was combed into place with lotus oil. He was a pretty man—there was no denying that. But no Cimmerian woman would bother to bed him. Beneath his ostentatious, swaggering confidence, the faltering heartbeat of a coward was plain to hear. Such a man’s seed could never sprout strong daughters. What good was a man like Paris?
He came toward Helen grinning, his arms outstretched as if to embrace her, but Helen stiffened as he approached, drawing her typical icy aloofness tight like a fur cloak in winter.
Paris’ hands fell back to his side, but his grin remained firm.
“My lovely,” he said.
Helen allowed him to kiss her cheek—that, and nothing more. “What brings you here?”
“A man may visit his wife in her chamber. If the gods have made new proclamations forbidding it, I haven’t heard.” Paris laughed with a note of pure confidence. His charm was palpable, even cloying. “You haven’t been seen out in the garden or walking the palace for several days.”
“Should I go wandering about like Cassandra?”
“Fresh air is good for the body and the mind,” Paris protested. “A stroll in the garden would brighten your moods.”
“My moods do not need brightening, thank you.” Helen returned to the window, gazing down on the garden she spurned.
Paris stepped closer and took her by the elbow, a commanding grip. Helen pulled her arm away with a smooth, unthinking motion, not deigning to meet his eye.
“Then brighten your people’s moods,” he said. “You know Troy has been under a dark cloud since Hector’s death. They need to see their great beauty out there”—he nodded toward the garden, to the city beyond the citadel—“you, confident and smiling, among them.”
Helen’s laugh was short and sharp. “I am not their beauty, and well you know it. There is not a tongue in Troy that hasn’t cursed my name. The city despises me, Paris—everyone in it. And so what has this all been for?”
She gestured out over the city, toward the wall and what lay beyond—what none of them could see but which they could all feel like weights around their necks, dragging them down into dark water. The ranks of tents waiting like wolves on the plain. The black ships anchored in the bay.
“Troy may yet win,” Paris said jauntily. Penthesilea could hear the waver in his words.
She expected Helen to give another of her cold, bitter laughs. But she only shook her head slowly. “No, Paris. Not now. Not with Hector dead. He was our hope, our pride. Our gift from the gods. He was our future king.”
“I’m tired of hearing about Hector,” Paris hissed. “He wasn’t the only son of Priam, you know. He wasn’t our city’s only hero!”
“Oh, do we have another?” Helen arched one thin golden brow in dark amusement. “Tell me—who is he? That sour-faced prig Aeneas, perhaps? Your little brother Polites, now that he’s all of fourteen?” She held Paris’ eye with a merciless stare. “I haven’t seen a hero in Troy since Hector fell.”
Paris’ face darkened; his lips thinned as if he’d bitten into a sour fruit. “My own wife believes me a coward—is that the way of it?”
Helen’s only answer was a tiny, needling smile.
The prince dropped his forced cheer like a hot brand. He drew close to Helen—so close he seemed suddenly menacing, and Penthesilea moved toward him, ready to defend her cousin.
“Go outside,” Paris said flatly. “Take the air. Show your face. I’ll hear no more of this moping in your chamber. It’s not a request, Helen. It’s a command from your husband. Since you’ve failed in every other way as my wife—failed to give me children, failed to keep warming my bed as is your duty—you will give me obedience.”
With that, he turned and stalked out the chamber door.
“Fool,” Helen muttered before the door had closed.
When they were alone again, she sighed and turned to Penthesilea with a weary shake of her head. “Hector. He could never pretend liking for me, considering the trouble I brought in my wake, but I always held him in high honor. What are we without him? I can’t tell you how precarious Troy seems now, as if there’s a great blade hanging over all our heads, and any moment it might drop. I almost wish it would just so the waiting would end. Just so it would be over.”
Penthesilea hadn’t been in Troy long, but she knew at once what Helen meant. The days of mourning Hector, of cowering under the blow of his loss, seemed to be coming to an end. Conflict was gathering its strength once more, preparing to strike again. The whole city felt like a crouching animal—waiting, tensing itself for some terrible blow. Hector had been their shield and their mighty arm. There was no shield now, no defense, even with Troy’s vast and soaring walls. The gods had turned their backs on the city. Achilles, god-born, had taken Hector away.
“You mustn’t speak that way,” Penthesilea said. “The blade won’t fall. I won’t let it.”
Helen turned to her, pale as bone. “You won’t? What can you do, Penthesilea—anything more than Paris can? What can a woman do?”
Helen’s slaves entered the chamber then, bearing an early evening meal. Despite her promise to eat, Penthesilea slipped back to her sleeping alcove while Helen was distracted, pulling her saddlebags from beneath the wicker bed. She found her bag of bones in their soft-worn leather pouch and hid the pouch in her fist. Then she hurried outside and crouched on the other side of the laurel tree’s trunk before Helen could note her absence.
Penthesilea spilled the bones into her palm and stared at them for a long time. They were marked all over with the symbols of divination, the symbols rubbed with charcoal so they stood out starkly against the smooth whiteness. She hadn’t cast bones since long before her sister died, and she didn’t know whether the gods would still work their powers for her—for Hippolyte’s killer.
“Do it.”
Penthesilea, squatting on her heels, looked up in alarm. The laurel’s shadows played over the face and bare breasts of the woman in the faded black skirt. At close range, she could see that the woman’s feet were bare, hard and dry at the soles.
