48

Ilium and Olympos

The ultimate war begins here in a murdered child’s nursery.

The gods must have quantum teleported down to talk with mortals this way a thousand times before—Athena, arrogant in her divinity, Apollo, secure in his power, and my Muse, probably brought along to identify the rogue scholic, Hockenberry. But this day, instead of encountering deference and awe, instead of conversing with the foolish mortals eager to be cajoled into more interesting ways of slaughtering one another, they are attacked on sight.

Apollo lifts his bow in my direction, the Muse pointing and saying “There he is!” but before the god can nock one of his silver arrows, Hector leaps, swings his sword, hacks down the bow, steps closer, and thrusts his sword deep into Apollo’s belly.

“Stop!” shouts Athena, throwing up a forcefield, but too late. Fleet-footed Achilles has already stepped inside the circle of the forcefield and slashes the goddess from shoulder to hip with a single mighty swing.

Athena screams and the jet roar is so loud that most of the mortals in this room—myself included—go to one knee in pain with hands over our ears. Not Hector. Not Achilles. The two must be deaf to anything but the internal roar of their own rage.

Apollo shouts some amplified warning even as he raises his right arm—either to warn off Hector or to unleash some godly lightning—but Hector doesn’t wait to discover the god’s intentions. Swinging his heavy sword in a two-handed backhand that reminds me of Andre Agassiz in his prime, Hector slices off Apollo’s right arm in a spray of golden ichor.

For the second time in my life, I watch a god writhe in agony and change shape—losing his godlike human form and becoming a whirlpool of blackness. From that blackness comes a bellow that sends the servants running from the nursery and drops me to both knees. The five Trojan women—Andromache, Laodice, Theano, Hecuba, and Helen—pull daggers from their robes and turn on the Muse.

Athena, her shape also quivering and unstable, stares down at her slashed breasts and bleeding belly and then raises her right hand, firing a beam of coherent energy that should have turned Achilles’ skull to plasma, but the Achaean ducks with superhuman speed—his DNA is nanocell enriched, tailored by the gods themselves—and swings his sword at the goddess’s legs even as the wall behind him bursts into flame. Athena levitates—rising off the floor and hovering—but not before Achilles’ sword slashes through divine muscle and bone, leaving her left leg dangling in two pieces.

This time the scream is too loud to bear, and I lose consciousness for a minute, but not before I see my Muse—the terror of my days—so panicked that she forgets her power to teleport and simply runs from the room, my five Trojan women chasing her with daggers in hand.

I come to a few seconds later. Achilles is shaking me.

“They fled,” he snarls. “The shit-eating cowards fled to Olympos. Take us there, Hockenberry.” He picks me up with one hand, his fist tight around the strap that holds my breastplate in place, shakes me at arm’s length, and sets the tip of his god-blooded sword under my chin. “Now!” he snarls.

I know that to resist will mean death—Achilles’ eyes are mad, pupils contracted to black pinpricks—but at that moment Hector grabs Achilles’ arm and forces it down until my feet touch the floor. Achilles drops me and turns toward his short-lived Trojan ally, and for an instant I’m sure that Fate will reassert itself—that fleet-footed Achilles will slaughter Hector here and now.

“Comrade,” says Hector, holding his empty palm straight. “Fellow enemy of the ruthless gods!”

Achilles checks his attack.

“Hear me!” snaps Hector, every inch the field marshal now. “Our shared desire is to follow these wounded gods to Olympos and there die in glorious combat, trying to bring down Zeus himself.”

Achilles’ wild expression does not change. His eyes show mostly white. But he’s listening. Barely.

“But our glorious deaths now will mean our peoples’ destruction,” continues Hector. “To avenge ourselves properly, we must rally our armies to our side, lay siege to Olympos, and bring down all the gods. Achilles, see to your people!”

Achilles blinks and turns to me. “You,” he snaps. “Can you carry me straight back to the Achaean camp with your magic?”

“Yes,” I say shakily. I see Helen and the other women returning to the death nursery, their daggers unstained by golden god-blood. Evidently the Muse has escaped.

Achilles turns to Hector. “Speak to your men. Kill any captains who resist your will. I shall do the same with my Argives and meet you in three hours at that sharp ridge that rises out of Ilium—you know the one I mean, man. You locals call it Thicket Ridge. The gods and we Achaeans think of it as the leaping Amazon Myrine’s mounded tomb.”

“I know it,” says Hector. “Bring a dozen of your favorite generals with you to this conference, Achilles. But leave your armies a half a league behind until we agree on strategy.”

Achilles shows his teeth in what could be a snarl or grin. “You don’t trust me, son of Priam?”

“Our hearts are joined in boundless anger and bottomless sorrow at this moment,” says Hector. “You for Patroclus, me for my son. We are brothers in madness at the moment, but three hours is enough for even the fires of common cause to cool. And you have the world’s ablest tactician with you—Odysseus, whose craft and cleverness all Trojans fear. If the son of Laertes counsels you to betrayal, how will I know?”

Achilles shakes his head impatiently. “Two hours then. I’ll bring my most trustworthy generals. And any Achaeans who will not follow me in war against the gods today will be shades in Hades by nightfall.”

He swings away from Hector and grasps my forearm so tightly that I almost cry out. “Take me to my camp, Hockenberry.”

I fumble for the QT medallion.

The wind has blown the levitating Orphu-thing a quarter of a mile down the beach and into the surf between two long black Achaean ships, and I have to leave Achilles and his captains to retrieve the Device. Because of the levitation harness, there’s no friction, and I borrow a rope from the watching Greeks, hitch it around one of the levitation belts, and drag the cracked and cratered shell out of the water and back up the beach in front of the staring heroes of the Iliad.

It’s obvious that there has been much argument in the Achaean camp. Diomedes is telling Achilles that half the men are preparing their ships for sail, while the other half are readying themselves for death. The idea of resisting the gods—much less attacking them—is not only madness but blasphemy to all these men who’ve seen the gods in action. Diomedes himself comes close to defying Achilles here in council.

Speaking with the fine rhetoric he’s famous for, Achilles reminds them of his hand-to-hand combat with Agamemnon and Menelaus and his legal assumption of command of the Achaean armies. He reminds them of the murder of Patroclus. He praises their courage and their loyalty. He tells them that the loot of Ilium is nothing compared to the riches they’ll have when they loot Olympos. He reminds them that he can and will kill all of them if they resist. All in all, it’s a convincing speech but not a happy conference.

This is all screwed up. My plan had been for the heroes to defy the gods and end the war, for the Achaeans to sail home and for the Trojans to resume their lives with the great gates of their walled city open once again to travelers and merchants. I’d imagined the City at Peace as illustrated near the center of Achilles’ shield. And I’d thought—hoped—that Achilles and Hector would meekly sacrifice themselves for the greater good, not enlist tens upon tens or hundreds of thousands of others in their battle.