Savi told them that it was about thirty miles to the coastline of the former Mediterranean Sea. They made the distance in less than ten minutes.

“Look at this,” said Savi, slowing the crawler. She removed her night-vision glasses and flicked on the headlights, fog lights, and searchlights.

A mass of five or six hundred voynix had made a wedge near where the land suddenly tilted down into the dry Mediterranean Basin.

“Do we turn?” asked Harman.

Savi shook her head and accelerated the crawler forward. Later, Daeman thought that the sound of the machine hitting so many voynix at such high speed had been somewhat like a hailstorm he had heard on a metal roof in Ulanbat many years ago. But this was very large hail.

The crawler reached the former shoreline, Savi cried “Hang on,” and the machine was airborne for ten seconds as it jumped the drop between shore and former sea. Then the six huge wheels hit the ground, the struts absorbed most of the shock and stabilized them, and they drove straight ahead down into the Basin, headlights and searchlights still stabbing white cones out of the darkness.

Daeman looked back and saw the surviving voynix, silhouetted by the distant blue beam, lining the shoreline behind them. “They won’t follow?” he asked.

“Into the Basin?” said Savi. “Never.” She slowed the crawler to a more reasonable speed, but before she slipped on her glasses and shut off the lights, Daeman saw that they were following a smooth red-clay road through verdant fields of crops. There were black metal crosses rising above the level of the wheat and corn and sunflowers and flax out there in the dark, and, impaled on each cross, was what looked to be a pale, writhing, naked human body.

34

The Coast of Ilium, Indiana

Achilles raged, roared, and tore at the tent wall where the goddess Athena had disappeared, dragging the body of Patroclus. Then the man-killer went mad.

His guards rushed in. Still naked, Achilles lifted the first man and threw him at the head of the second guard. The third guard heard a roar and found himself also flying through the air, tearing through the canvas wall of the tent. The fourth threw down his spear and ran to wake the Myrmidons to let them know that their lord and captain had been possessed by a demon spirit.

Achilles gathered up his breechcloth, his tunic, his breastplate, his shield, his polished bronze greaves, his sandals, and his spear, wrapped them in a sheet, and, taking up his sword, cut his way through three canvas walls of tent. Outside, he shoved over the large tripod left burning in the center of his camp and ran past the darkened tents—toward the dark sea and away from all the encampments of men, toward his mother, the goddess Thetis.

The waves crashed in to shore, only the whites of each curl visible in the darkness here away from the fires. Achilles paced back and forth on the wet sand. He was still naked, his armor and his weapons scattered on the beach. While he paced, he pulled at his long hair and moaned aloud, occasionally crying out his mother’s name in anguish.

And Thetis, daughter of the sea god Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea, answered Achilles’ call, appearing from the salt-green depths, rising up from the rolling surf like a mist, but then solidifying into the tall form of the noble goddess. Achilles ran to her like an injured child and fell to one knee in the wet sand. Thetis cradled his head against her wet breast while he sobbed.

“My child—why the weeping? What sorrow has hurt your heart?”

Achilles groaned. “You know, you must know, Mother—don’t make me tell it all again.”

“I was with my father in the salt-green depths,” murmured Thetis, stroking Achilles’ golden hair. “Since mortals and gods were both sleeping so late, I did not see what transpired. Share it all, my son.”

And Achilles did, sobbing with grief, choking with anger. He told of the appearance of Pallas Athena, of her insults and taunts. He described the apparent murder of his friend Patroclus.

“She took away his body, Mother!” cried Achilles. He was beyond comfort. “She took away his body so that I can’t even perform the proper funeral rites for him!”

Thetis patted his shoulder and burst into tears herself. “Oh my son, my sorrow! Your birth was bitterness. All I bore was doom. Why did I raise you up, if it is Zeus’s will to throw you down?”

Achilles raised his tear-streaked face. “So it is Zeus’s will? It was Pallas Athena who just killed Patroclus—not some false image of the goddess?”

“It was Zeus’s will,” wept his mother. “And although I did not see it, I know it was Goddess Athena herself who taunted you and killed your friend this night. Oh, the pity that you were doomed not only to a short life, Achilles, my son, but to one so filled with heartbreak.”

Achilles pulled away and stood. “Why did the immortal gods insult me so, Mother? Why would Athena, who has championed the Argive cause—and especially my own—for so many years, abandon me now?”

“The gods are fickle,” said Thetis, water still running from her long hair down to her breasts. “Perhaps you’ve noticed.”

Achilles paced back and forth in front of her, repeatedly balling his hands into fists and unballing them into splayed fingers as he stabbed at the air. “It makes no sense! To bring me so far—to help me in my conquests so frequently—only for Athena and her divine father to insult me so now.”

“They are ashamed of you, Achilles.”

The man-killer stopped in his tracks and turned a pale, frozen face her way. He looked as if he had been slapped hard. “Ashamed of me? Ashamed of fleet-footed Achilles, son of Peleus and the goddess Thetis? Ashamed of the grandson of Aeacus?”

“Yes,” said his mother. “Zeus and the lesser gods, including Athena, have always had contempt for mortal men, even you heroes. From their vantage point on Olympos you are all less than insects, your lives are nasty, brutish, and short, and your very existences are justified only because you amuse them by your deaths. So by sulking in your tent while the fate of the war is sealed, you’ve irritated the Third Born daughter of Zeus and lord god Father Zeus himself.”

“They killed Patroclus!” roared Achilles, stepping back from the goddess, his bare feet leaving footprints in the wet sand. Footprints that were washed away on the next roll of the surf.

“They think you are too much of a coward to avenge his death,” said Thetis. “They leave his corpse for the crows and vultures on the heights of Olympos.”

Achilles moaned and fell to his knees. He pulled great fistfuls of wet sand from the beach and smashed them to his bare chest. “Mother, why are you telling me this now? If you knew of the gods’ contempt for me, why haven’t you told me before? Always you taught me to serve and revere Zeus. To obey the goddess Athena.”

“I always hoped the other gods would grant mercy on our mortal children,” said Thetis. “But lord Zeus’s cold heart and Athena’s warrior ways have won the day. The race of men is of no interest to them any longer. Not even for sport. Nor are we few immortals who argue your case safe from Zeus’s wrath.”

Achilles stood and took three steps closer to his mother. “Mother, you’re an immortal. Zeus cannot harm thee.”

Thetis laughed without humor. “The Father can kill anything and anyone he wishes, my son. Even an immortal. Worse than that, he can banish us to the murk of Tartarus, throw us down into that hellish pit the way he did his own father, Kronos, and his weeping mother, Rhea.”

“So you’re in danger,” Achilles said numbly. He teetered like a man who has drunk too much or like a sailor on the pitching deck of a small ship at sea in storm.

“I am doomed,” said Thetis. “And so are you, my child, unless you do the one thing that no mortal—not even the brazen Herakles—has attempted before.”