helped them. I had helped them to kill my own wife. I know I should have felt hot, surging anger: rage, a killing fury. But instead I felt nothing. Nothing. I was numb. It was as if I had been plunged into the icy waters of the sea, sinking to the bottom. I heard nothing. I saw nothing. I wanted to scream. I knew I should wreak vengeance on these slaughtering barbarians. But I simply stood there, paralyzed, as cold as a block of stone.
I had caused this. I had helped them to kill Aniti. She had depended on me to save her and I had failed.
Then I thought about my sons. I had to find them before these Achaian butchers took them, too.
Abruptly I turned from the priests and their blood-caked altar and headed back toward Agamemnon’s boats. My sons would be there, if they lived.
If they lived.
I went from boat to boat, searching for them. A few remaining serving women huddled next to the curving hulls, on the side away from the fires, hoping that the black shadows would hide them from roving drunken Achaians, trembling and wide-eyed at the slaughter going on. Many were sobbing, hiding their faces in their hands. More than one had clapped her hands over her ears, trying to blot out the screams of the sacrificial victims.
A few young boys sat among them, equally terrified. Lads of ten or so, they seemed. Not my sons. Not my boys.
They all jumped with surprise at the sight of me, edging away at the sight of an armed warrior. I went from boat to boat, but my sons were nowhere in sight.
Then one of the older women, her white hair hanging limply past her shoulders, called to me: “Hittite? You are the Hittite?”
She was short and round; her wrinkled face looked like a crushed piece of parchment in the flickering red light of the fires. An aged grandmother, I thought. She belonged in a farm house with her children around her, not here on this blood-soaked beach before the ruins of Troy.
I stepped to her. “I am the Hittite,” I said.
“Aniti said you would come,” she said, in a voice cracked with age. “When they … when they took her she told me to … to protect the boys … until you came for them.”
“Where are they?”
She turned and walked slowly down the length of the boat. Near the steering oar, barely a dozen paces from the lapping water of the sea, two little boys were sleeping soundly beneath a single threadbare blanket.
Asleep. They’ve slept through it all, I realized. All the blood and fire, all the carousing and screaming. They looked so calm, so relaxed. Their hair was tousled, their eyes softly closed. The smaller of them had his thumb in his mouth.
I sank to my knees beside them. They’re alive. They’re unhurt. Thank the gods, they’re alive.
And then I thought of Aniti. Their mother. My wife. I couldn’t protect her, couldn’t save her. The last moments of her life must have been terrible. Being dragged away from her babies. Herded in with the other victims. Pushed closer and closer to the blazing pyres. Then forced down on the altar. The last thing she must have seen was that damnable stone knife.
I cried. The tears leaked from my eyes unbidden. I hardly knew Aniti, yet I felt a sadness, a sorrow beyond words. She didn’t deserve this fate. I should have done better for her. I had failed her.
But she had not failed her babies. Even as they dragged her off to the sacrificial fires, she had left the boys with this doughty old grandmother and told her that I would come for them.
How long I knelt there sobbing I don’t know. But at last I wiped my eyes and focused on my sons. I had failed to protect their mother, but I would die before I’d let any harm fall on them.
I rose to my feet. The old woman stood in the shadows, watching me.
“Thank you, Grandmother,” I said. Taking Odysseos’ bracelet from my wrist, I handed it to her.
“No!” she gasped. “I couldn’t.”
“Take it,” I said. “It’s not a gift. It’s payment for protecting my sons.”
Reluctantly, with trembling hands, she reached for the bracelet. Even in the shadow of the black boat’s hull its gems glittered.
She helped me lift the two boys into my arms. Lighter than my shield, they stirred sleepily but neither of them opened his eyes. Carrying the two of them, I strode past the boats of Agamemnon, determined to leave this camp, this beach, this accursed band of barbarian cutthroats.
And go where? I didn’t know, not then. Nor did I care. All I wanted at that moment was to take my sons away from Troy and the victorious Achaians.
Away from Helen, a voice within me whispered. And I loathed myself for the thought.
As I came to the Ithacan boats, where my men were happily dividing their spoils, Magro saw me approaching. He scrambled to his feet and ran to me.
“You’ve got them!”
“I’ve got them.”
“And your wife?”
I looked toward the flames still crackling at the pyres. My voice caught in my throat, but at last I was able to croak out, “I was too late.”
He shook his head. “Well, there are other women.”
I said nothing. Magro helped me to gently lay the boys on a blanket and cover them.
As we straightened up he said, “You’d better look after your servant.”
“Poletes?”
“He swilled down a flagon of wine and now he’s off telling stories that could get him in trouble.”
“Stories?”
“He’s mocking Agamemnon and his generosity.”
I felt my brows knit. “Isn’t everyone?”
“Yes, but he’s also talking about Queen Clytemnestra, back in Mycenae. If the High King hears about what he’s saying …” Magro ran a finger across his throat.
4
“Where is the old windbag?” I asked.
Magro waved in the direction away from the pyres. “He tottered off in that direction. I warned him to keep his mouth shut, but he’s full of wine.”
I pulled in a deep breath. “I’ll find him. Watch over my sons.”
Magro glanced down at the sleeping boys. “They’ll make good soldiers,” he said, grinning.
“What?”
“If they can sleep through this night, they’ll be able to sleep anywhere. That’s an important gift for a soldier.”
“You just make certain no one disturbs them,” I said.
Magro tapped his fist to his chest. I turned and started along the beach once more, searching for Poletes. I passed a stream of Achaians toting away their loot, many of them disgruntled with the share of booty Agamemnon had parceled out to them. The fire from the pyres was slowly dying, but off in the distance I could see the city still glowing red with flames behind its high walls.
I found Poletes sitting on the sand by a small campfire, practically under the nose of one of Menalaos’ boats, surrounded by a growing mob of squatting, standing, grinning, laughing Achaians. None of them were of the nobility, as far as I could see. But off in the shadows I noticed white-bearded Nestor standing with his skinny arms folded across his chest, frowning in Poletes’ direction.
“… and do you remember when Hector drove them all back inside our own gates here, and he came scurrying 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 perfectly. He was in good fettle, the gloom and melancholy of only an hour or so earlier seemed entirely gone now. Perhaps it was the audience surrounding him that had changed his mood. More likely it was the wine; I saw an empty flagon resting on its side an arm’s length from his squatting figure.
