“Itbah al-Yahud!” screamed the metallic voice from everywhere. The syllables echoed back from the Mount without losing their demented urgency.

“What does that mean?” asked Daeman.

Savi was watching the blue-lighted voynix scrabbling closer over rooftops and through the maze of narrow, winding streets. The wave of huge insectoid shapes was less than two city blocks away now, close enough that they could all hear the scratch and tear of cutting blade and sharp manipulators on stone and tile. Savi turned slowly. Her face looked older than ever in the pulsing blue light.

“Itbah al-Yahud,” she repeated softly. “Kill the Jew.”

32

Achilles’ Tent

I have to kill Patroclus.

That realization comes to me like a whisper in the night as I lie here in the Myrmidon encampment, in Achilles’ tent, wrapped in the shell of Phoenix’ old body.

I have to kill Patroclus.

I’ve never killed anyone. Jesus Christ, I protested the Vietnam War as a college student, couldn’t put the family dog to sleep—had to have my wife take her to the vet—and considered myself a pacifist for most of my academic life. I’ve never hit another man, for Christ’s sake.

I have to kill Patroclus.

It’s the only way. I trusted that rhetoric would do it—old Phoenix’s revised rhetoric—that rhetoric would persuade the man-killer Achilles into meeting with Hector, into ending this war, into burying the hatchet.

Yeah, right in my forehead.

Achilles’ decision to leave—to return to a long life of pleasure but little glory—is deeply shocking to this scholic, to any student of the Iliad, but it makes sense. Honor is still more important than life to Achilles, but after Agamemnon’s insults, he sees no honor in killing Hector and then being killed in turn. Odysseus—that ultimate rhetorician—was eloquent in his explanation and evocation of how the living Achaeans and countless generations after would honor Achilles’ memory, but it’s not their honor that Achilles cares about. Only his sense of honor counts here, and there will be no honor now for him in killing Agamemnon’s enemies and dying for Agamemnon’s and Menelaus’ objectives. Only Achilles’ honor counts, and he’d rather sail for home in a few hours and live the life of a lesser mortal, forsaking his chance to be part of this band of brothers twenty centuries before Prince Hal and Agincourt, than compromise any more honor here on the bloody plains of Ilium.

I see that now. Why didn’t I see it before? If Odysseus could not convince Achilles to fight—Odysseus of the crafty ways and silver tongue—why did I think I’d succeed? I was a fool. Homer made me a fool, but I was still a fool.

I have to kill Patroclus .

Not long after Odysseus and Big Ajax left, just after the torches and tripod fires were extinguished in the main room of Achilles’ tent, I heard slave girls being escorted in for the pleasure of Achilles and Patroclus. I’d never seen either of these slave girls, but I knew their names—Homer leaves no one nameless in the Iliad. Achilles’ girl (I couldn’t have used that word while teaching at Indiana University in my other life or the Political Correctness Police would have had my job, but here it doesn’t seem appropriate to call these giggling sex toys “women”) was named Diomede, Phorbas’ daughter from the isle of Lesbos—although she was no lesbian. Patroclus’ main squeeze was named Iphis. I almost laughed out loud as I caught a glimpse of them through the folds in the tent door—Achilles, who is tall and blond and statuesque and chiseled with muscle, preferred the tiny, stocky, brunette and large-breasted Diomede; Patroclus, who is much shorter than Achilles and dark-haired, had opted for the tall, blonde, thin, small-busted Iphis. For half an hour or so, I could hear the women’s laughter, the men’s rough conversation, and then the moans and cries from all four in Achilles’ sleeping chamber. Obviously the hero and his pal had no qualms about having sex in the same room with each other, even commenting on it while it was occurring, which makes me think more of Bloomington, Indiana, male Realtors or lodge brothers having a weekend in the big city than it does of the noble warriors of this heroic age. Barbaric.

Then the girls left—giggling again—and there was silence except for muttered exchanges between the guards outside the tent and the crackle of brazier flames keeping those guards warm. That and monstrous snoring from Achilles’ sleeping chamber. I hadn’t heard Patroclus leave, so either he or the golden hero sounded like he had a deviated septum.

Now I lie here and consider my options. No, first I morph out of Phoenix’s old form—damn the consequences!—and lie here as Thomas Hockenberry and consider my options.

I have my hand on the QT medallion. I can jump to Helen’s sleeping chambers again—I know for a fact that Paris is out beyond the trench here, miles from the city, waiting for dawn to join Hector in the final slaughter of Greeks and the burning of the Achaean ships. Helen might be happy to see me. Or she might have no further use or amusement from the night-visitor named Hockenberry—how strange that someone here other than another scholic knows my name!—and she might call her guards. No problem with that; I can always QT away in an instant.

To what destination?

I can give up this mad plan to change the course of the Iliad, abandon my goal—formed on the night that Agamemnon and Achilles first quarreled—of defying the immortal gods, QT to Olympos, apologize to the Muse and to Aphrodite when they decant her, ask Zeus for a personal audience, and beg for a pardon.

Uh-huh. What are the odds that they’d forgive and forget, Hockenbush? You stole the Hades Helmet, the QT medallion, and all your scholic gear and used them for your own purposes. You fled from the Muse. Worst of all, you hijacked a flying chariot and tried to kill Aphrodite in her healing tank.

My best hope after apologizing would be that Zeus or Aphrodite or the Muse would kill me quickly, rather than turn me inside out or cast me down into the murky pit of Tartarus, where I’d probably be eaten alive by Kronos and the other barbarous Titans banished there by Zeus.

No, I’ve buttered my bread and now I have to lie in it. Or however that phrase goes. In for a penny, in for a pound. No guts, no glory. Better safe than sorry. But while I’m struggling for a cliché, any cliché, a profound realization settles over me in a profoundly unprofessorial but absolutely convincing phrasing—

If I don’t think of something soon, I am well and truly fucked.

I can go reason with Odysseus.

Odysseus is the sane one here, the civilized man, the wise tactician. Odysseus may be the answer tonight. I’ll have a better chance convincing Odysseus that an end to this war with the Trojans and common cause against the all-too-human gods is an option. To tell you the truth, I always enjoyed teaching the Odyssey to my students more than the Iliad ; Fitzgerald’s sensibilities in the Odyssey are so much more humane than the rough bellicosity of Mandelbaum’s and Lattimore’s and Fagles’s and even Pope’s Iliad. I was mistaken to think that I could find the fulcrum of events by coming here with the embassy to Achilles. No, Achilles isn’t the man to approach this night—what’s left of this night—but Odysseus, son of Laertes, a man who might understand a scholar’s pleas and the compelling logic of peace.

I actually rise and touch the QT medallion, ready to go find Odysseus and make my plea. There’s only one little problem that keeps me from QTing in search of Odysseus: if Homer was telling the truth, I know what’s happening elsewhere while I’ve been lying in this tent and brooding. Agamemnon and Menelaus can’t sleep for their own brooding on the course of events, and some time around now, or perhaps in the last hour or so, the older and more royal brother calls for Nestor and asks for ideas that might stave off the massacre that seems so imminent. Nestor recommends a war counsel with Diomedes, Odysseus, Little Ajax, and some of the other Achaean captains. Once these leaders are gathered, Nestor suggests that the boldest among them should sneak behind Trojan lines and divine Hector’s intentions—will the Trojans and their allies try to burn the ships in a few hours’ time? Or is it possible that Hector has had enough blood and victory for now, and will lead his hordes back into the city to celebrate before opening further hostilities?