Fall of Kings (32 page)

Kalliades knew he was right. They had served with the Mykene army themselves
for many years, and they both knew that the reputation of those grim warriors
was well deserved.

The silence lingered for a while. It was a still night, and Kalliades
listened to its sounds: the laughter of the men, the crackling of the nearby
campfire, the sounds of horses shifting their hooves and snuffling gently. Then
he asked, “What did the king say about generals? He’d rather have a lucky fool
than an unlucky genius?”

Banokles frowned and scratched his thick blond beard. “I think that’s what he
said. Great Zeus,” he said indignantly, “only a king could get away with calling
me a fool.”

“You’re not a fool, Banokles. But you have always been lucky in battle.”

Banokles’ face darkened, and he said nothing. Kalliades guessed he was
thinking about luck and about Red, so he stayed silent.

Finally Banokles asked him, “How many battles do you think we’ve been in,
Kalliades?”

Kalliades shrugged. “I don’t know. Hundreds.”

“But here we are, waiting for another one. Fit and strong and ready. We’ve
neither of us been badly wounded. Just my ear, I suppose.” He rubbed the nub of
his ear thoughtfully, then the scar on his right bicep where the sword of
Argurios had plunged through it. “Now, we are great warriors, you and I. But we
have been lucky, haven’t we?”

He glanced at Kalliades, who nodded his agreement, guessing what he was
leading up to.

“So why”—Banokles frowned—“why in the name of Hades does someone like Red,
who never did anyone any harm, die like that when we’re still here? What poxy
god decided she had to die such a stupid poxy death?”

He looked at Kalliades, who saw grief and anger in his friend’s ice-blue
eyes.

“Whores get killed sometimes,” Banokles went on. “It’s a perilous business;
everybody knows that. But Red had given up her whoring when she got married. She
just loved those honey cakes, and he was the only baker in the city who was
still making them. That was the reason she asked him to our house.”

There was another long silence. “And he was only a skinny little runt.”

“He was a baker,” Kalliades said gently. “He had strong arms and shoulders.
Red would not have stood a chance.”

Banokles was quiet again, watching as the sky darkened to pitch black. Then
he said, “That priestess Piria, Kalliope, whatever she called herself. That was
a good death, saving her friend. And that queen on the black stallion. They both
had a chance of a warrior’s death even though they’re women. But Red…” His voice
trailed off.

“They say heroes who die in battle go to the Elysian Fields and dine in the
Hall of Heroes. I’ve always looked forward to that. But what happens to the
women who are heroes? Like Piria and that queen? And what happens to Red? Where
does she go now?”

Kalliades knew that his comrade was consumed by the grief of loss and by
frustration. Banokles had been used to the simple code of the warrior: If
someone kills your friend or brother in arms, you take revenge. Yet how could he
avenge himself on a dead baker?

Kalliades sighed. “I don’t know the answer to that, my friend. Maybe one day
you’ll find out. I hope so.”

He added sadly, “We’ve seen a lot of death, you and I—more than most. You
know as well as I do death doesn’t always come to those who deserve it.”

Kalliades’ mind went back to the farm outside Troy and Piria standing on the
hillside, her blond hair shining in the light from the blazing barn, her face
stern, calmly shooting arrows into the assassins who had come to kill
Andromache. He had promised Odysseus that he would take Piria to meet Hektor’s
wife, that he would see her safely to the end of her journey. How foolish of
him, how arrogant, to think that he could guarantee her safety, as if love were
all that was needed. The hurt in him had lessened over the seasons, but the
doubt had grown. Had he really loved Piria? Or had Red been right?

He thought of the big whore’s words to him long ago.
“We are so alike,
Kalliades. Closed off from life, no friends, no loved ones. That is why we need
Banokles. He is life, rich and raw in all its glory. No subtlety, no guile. He
is the fire we gather around, and his light pushes back the shadows we fear.”

He looked at Banokles, who had lain back again and closed his eyes, his
profile barely visible in the firelight. A sudden trickle of fear ran through
Kalliades. His old comrade in arms had changed so much in the last few years.
His wife’s death had wrought more changes. Would he continue to be the lucky
fool Priam had called him?

“Help me. Please help me.” The cry came from a dying man, and the young
healer Xander, pulling a cart full of severed limbs past the rows of wounded
soldiers at the barracks hospital, hesitated before stopping. He pulled a
bloodstained cloth over the cart to hide its grisly load, then went over to the
man.

He was a rider. Xander, who had seen more injuries in his young life than
most soldiers, could tell at a glance. One leg had been severed raggedly below
the knee, perhaps by a blow from an ax. The other had been injured so badly,
perhaps by an awkward fall from his mount, that it had been amputated high on
the thigh. Both stumps were rotting, and Xander knew the man would die soon and
in agony. He laid his hand gently on the man’s shoulder. “Are you Trojan Horse?”
he asked.

“Yes, sir, Phegeus son of Dares. Am I dying, sir?” Xander saw that Phegeus
had been blinded by a blow to the head. He believed he was being visited by a
commanding officer, not a freckle-faced healer of fewer than seventeen summers.

“Yes, soldier,” the youngster said gently. “But the king knows you fought
bravely for your city. Your name is on his lips.”

Xander long since had learned to lie glibly to dying men.

“Is he coming, sir? The king?” Phegeus reached out anxiously, grasping at the
air, and Xander took his flailing hand and held it between his own.

“King Priam will be here soon,” he said quietly. “He is proud of you.”

“Sir,” the man said confidentially, pulling Xander toward him. “The
pain… Sometimes I cannot… Sometimes… the pain is too bad. Let me know when the king
comes. I would not have him hear me cry like a woman.”

Xander reassured Phegeus that he would tell him when the king arrived, then
left to deposit the contents of his cart outside the barracks. He stopped for a
moment, gratefully sucking in the fresh night air off the sea before going back
into the hot fetid building.

The king would not come, Xander knew, but he had given Phegeus a small hope
to cling to in his dying moments.

He found Machaon, the head of the house, washing blood off his hands in a
barrel of water in the corner of the barracks. Machaon was still a relatively
young man but now looked like an ancient. His face was gray, the cheekbones
jutting from pallid skin. His eyes were hollow and deeply shadowed.

“We need hemlock,” Xander told him urgently. “We have brave men here whose
courage falters when they face the torment of their wounds.”

Machaon turned to him, and Xander could see the pain in his eyes. “There is
no hemlock to be found in the city,” the healer responded. “My prayers to the
serpent god have gone unanswered.”

Xander realized in a moment of dread that Machaon was not just exhausted, he
was gravely ill.

“What’s wrong, Machaon?” he cried. “You are suffering, too.”

Machaon stepped closer to the youngster, then lowered his voice. “I have had
a vileness growing in my belly since the winter. I have tried herbs and
cleansing honey, but it continues to grow.” His face suddenly spasmed, and he
bent over as if gripped by a clawing pain. When he stood up again, his skin was
ashen and beaded with sweat, his eyes unfocused.

“I have told no one, Xander,” he said shakily. “I ask you to keep my secret.
But I am too ill to travel down to the battlefield. You must go in my place.”

Despite his concern for his mentor, Xander’s heart leaped. It was a chance to
leave this place of death and go out in the fresh air, to deal with the lesser
wounds of men who were not dying, not in agony. Hektor had decreed that all
wounded men who could walk should stay out on the plain in case of a further
attack by Agamemnon’s armies. Those with serious wounds that were likely to heal
were carried to the House of Serpents in the upper city to recover their
strength for future battles. Those likely to die were in this hospital, the
former barracks of the Ileans. The barracks were in the lower town, inside the
fortification ditch and just a short distance from the funeral pyres that had
been burning day and night.

“I will go, Machaon,” he responded, “but you must rest.” He looked into the
tortured eyes and saw no chance of rest there. “Where do I go?”

“There are injured men everywhere. They will not be hard to find. Do your
best.” As Xander turned to go, Machaon’s hand shot out and grabbed his arm. The
boy could feel only cold from the older man’s bony fingers. “You always do your
best, Xander,” he said.

Xander packed a leather bag full of healing potions, bandages, his favorite
herbs, needles of different sizes, and thread. Then he snatched up a jug of wine
and three water skins and set off toward the battlefield.

The evening was cool, and as he walked, Xander tried to imagine that he was
back home on Kypros, strolling the green hills among his grandfather’s herds.
The distant cries of injured men became the gentle bleating of the wandering
goats. He half closed his eyes as he walked and could smell the distant sea and
hear the cry of the gulls. He stumbled on the rough path and nearly fell, and he
grinned at his foolishness. Yes, he thought, walk about with your eyes closed
and break a leg, Xander.

Machaon had been right. The injured were not hard to find. Xander walked
among them, placing clean bandages on wounds and sewing cuts on faces with fine
needles. He used larger bandages for legs and arms, along with thicker needles
and sturdier thread. He boiled his herbs in water over soldiers’ campfires to
make healing brews and splinted broken fingers. He urged some of the more
seriously injured men to go up to the houses of healing, but all refused. He
could not blame them.

The long night wore on, and as the sky started to lighten in the east, Xander
carried on working. He had met many of the soldiers before; they had come to him
with their wounds and their unexplained pains and minor illnesses, some of them
many times over the years. They greeted him as a comrade and joked with him in
the way of soldiers everywhere. They called him Shortshanks and Freckles, and he
flushed with pleasure at the affection in which he was held.

The sky lightened, the air warmed, and a heavy mist came rolling down the
Scamander valley, making it hard for him to see. He was so tired, he could
hardly stumble from one small campfire to the next, and his trembling hands no
longer could sew wounds. Still he walked on.

“Time to go, Xander,” said a familiar voice in his ear.

“Machaon?” he asked, looking around him, but the fog obscured everything.
“Machaon? Is that you?”

“Quickly, boy,” the voice said with urgency. “Stop what you are doing now and
hurry back to the city. Quickly now.”

Xander packed his leather bag hurriedly and threw it over one shoulder, then
picked up the empty water skins and started to make for the river. He barely
could see his hand in front of his face, and he was forced to walk slowly,
careful not to stumble over waking men or into the flanks of dozing horses.

Then out of the mist came a loud cry, echoing eerily through the darkness and
picked up by rank after rank of warriors’ voices, “Awake! Awake! They are
coming!”

Earlier that night, after the sun fell below the horizon to reveal a sky full
of stars, Odysseus had stood on the walls of King’s Joy, nursing a pain in his
shoulder and a wound to his heart.

Three days previously, his valiant force of Ithakans and Kephallenians had
been fighting on the Scamander plain when the Trojan Horse had punched into the
western armies like a battering ram, turning a knife-edge battle into a near
rout.

Two of Hektor’s riders had charged as one into Odysseus’ infantry, each
guarding the other’s flank, hacking with their swords, killing and wounding all
around them. As one rider raised his sword high to slash at a young crewman from
the
Bloodhawk,
Odysseus, running up behind, lanced a spear deep into the
rider’s side, straight into the heart. The bronze spear head lodged under a rib.
Odysseus tried to drag it out but pulled the dead rider off his horse. With dead
and dying warriors around him, the Ithakan king was slow to get out of the way,
and the body fell on him, dislocating his shoulder. The arm bone had been
wrenched back into place by Podaleirios, the Thessalian surgeon, but even now,
days later, Odysseus was still in pain. He had thrown away the sling he had been
given and had hidden his discomfort from others. But now, as he moved his arm
experimentally, as if swinging a sword, he cursed as agony fired through his
shoulder.

Twenty years ago, he thought irritably, or even ten, I would have shaken off
this injury within a day.

The greater agony, though, was in his heart. He remembered Penelope’s words
years before on the beach at Ithaka.
“I fear you will have hard choices to
make. Do not make bullheaded decisions you will regret afterward and cannot
change. Do not take these men into a war, Odysseus.”

“
I have no wish for war, my love,
” he had told her, and he had meant
it.

How the gods on Olympos must be reveling in the irony, he thought ruefully.
Or perhaps his wife’s fear never should have been voiced at all, lest the gods
were listening and chose to make it real.