realized, using me to make her escape from these Achaian barbarians. Was she offering herself as my reward for defying Menalaos and Agamemnon? No, I thought. She expects me to do what she wishes because she’s a noblewoman and I’m trained to follow orders.
“Very well,” I heard myself say to her. “We’ll leave at first light.”
Helen beamed a smile at me. “I’ll stay here, then. With you.”
“You can stay here in the tent with Poletes and my sons. You’ll have to sleep on the ground.”
Helen nodded gratefully. “I’ll be back in a few moments,” she said, in a half whisper, then hurried out, pulling the hood of Apet’s black cloak over her golden hair.
I realized she was attending to nature’s call. I turned and looked down Poletes. He was stirring on the cot, muttering something. I bent low hear his words. “Beware of a woman’s gifts,” he croaked.
I frowned at him. “Now you utter prophecies instead of stories, old man.”
Poletes did not reply.
8
I slept poorly, on the ground outside the tent, knowing full well what lay ahead of us. What little sleep I got was filled with fitful dreams of Egypt, a hot land stretching along a wide river, flanked on either side by burning desert. The Hatti had fought wars against the Egyptians, in the land of Canaan beside the Great Sea. But Egypt itself no Hatti soldier had ever seen. My dreams showed me a land of palm trees and crocodiles, so ancient that time itself seemed meaningless there. A land of massive pyramids standing like enormous monuments to the gods amid the puny towns of men, dwarfing all human scale, human knowledge.
It was still dark when I decided I could sleep no more. Egypt. Far-distant Egypt. We would have to travel a long time, through strange kingdoms and hostile territory. To bring fair-haired Helen to Egypt.
Once the first gray hint of dawn started lighting the eastern sky I roused my men and got them ready to leave. After a cold breakfast of figs and stale bread we loaded my boys and Poletes into one of the wagons with Helen, muffled once again in Apet’s hooded black robe.
Then it struck me. “What about your servant?”
From inside the hood Helen answered, “I can’t go back for her, Lukka. She’ll have to remain behind.”
“But once Menalaos realizes you’ve gone …”
“Apet will say nothing.”
“Even when they put her feet in the fire?”
Sitting up on the wagon’s headboard, Helen was silent for a heartbeat. Then, “Apet knows that if I’m not back to her by sunrise I’ve fled with you. She has sworn to kill herself before Menalaos can even begin questioning her.”
I felt my jaw drop open. “And you’ll let her die?”
“She’s very old, Lukka. She would only slow us down.”
“You’ll let her die?” I repeated.
“She loves me,” Helen said, her voice firm, as if she had thought it all out in her head and made her decision.
I stared up at her. Helen avoided my eyes. “You said you loved her,” I said.
With a burst of impatience, she demanded, “What would you have me do? You’re a soldier. Will you invade Menalaos’ camp and steal my servant away? You and your five men?”
I had no answer for that.
Leaving Helen sitting in her black robe, I straddled the thickly folded blanket that served as a saddle and nosed my horse toward Magro, who was leading a string of three ponies.
“Go drive the wagon,” I told him, reaching for the reins he held. “I’ll take the horses.”
“We’re really going to Egypt?” he asked, smiling quizzically at me.
I nodded.
“With your woman?” Magro tilted his head in Helen’s direction.
“She’s not my woman.”
Still smiling, “Then who is she?”
I decided to evade his question, for the time being. “Will it cause trouble with the men? Jealousy?”
Magro scratched at his beard. “There’ve been plenty of women in the camp. Especially in the last two nights.”
“I don’t want the men dragging along camp followers.”
“The men are satisfied for now. We can move faster without camp followers, that’s for certain.”
I could see from the look in his eye that he was thinking I was already dragging our little group down with two little boys and a blind old man. And now a woman.
Magro shrugged and let his smile grow wider. “We’ll find women here and there as we march, I suppose.”
I understood what he meant. “Yes. Our passage to Egypt won’t be entirely peaceful.”
His eyes locked on mine. “I hope we can leave the camp peacefully.”
I made myself smile back at him.
So we started out of the Achaian camp on the sandy beach. Ships were gliding out onto the sea, colorful sails bellying out as they caught the wind, carrying the victorious Achaians to their home cities. Troy still stood, gutted and burned black, its walls battered but still standing, for the most part. The sun rose in the east as it always does while our little pro cession of two carts and a dozen horses filed slowly through the gate that I had defended against Hector and down onto the strangely quiet plain of Ilios.
A pair of young warriors slouched by the gate, their spears on the ground, gnawing on haunches of roasted lamb. They waved lazily at us as we passed. Helen stayed inside the first wagon, tucked down among the bags of provisions with my two sons and Poletes.
We forded the shallow river and turned south, where the land rose slightly toward distant bare brown hills. I took over the wagon and let Magro take the horses. The rest of the men rode easily, glad to be mounted instead of afoot, as usual.
As we climbed the rutted trail I turned back for one last look at the ruin of Troy. The ground rumbled. Our horses snorted and neighed, prancing nervously. Even the donkeys pulling the carts twitched their long ears and hurried their pace unbidden.
“Poseidon speaks,” said Poletes from the depths of the wagon, his voice weak but clear. “The earth will shake soon from his wrath. He will finish the task of bringing down the walls of Troy.”
The old storyteller was predicting an earthquake. A big one. All the more reason to get as far away as possible.
Then Hartu, riding at the rear of our little group, pointed and shouted, “Lukka! Riders!”
I looked in the direction he was pointing and saw a cloud of dust. Riders indeed, I thought. Probably sent by Menalaos to search for his missing wife.
I snapped the reins, urging the donkeys onward. Thus we left Troy.
9
As I had feared, our journey southward was neither easy nor peaceful.
The whole world seemed to be in conflict. We trekked slowly down the hilly coastline, through regions that the Hatti called Assuwa and Seha. Once these people had been vassals of the emperor; now they were on their own, without the armed might of the Hatti to protect them, without the emperor’s law to bring order to their lives.
It seemed that every city, every village, every farm house was in arms. Bands of marauders prowled the countryside, some of them former Hatti army units just as we had been, most of them merely gangs of brigands.
