Fall of Kings (54 page)

Xander smiled at the idea of the two gentle healers circling each other with
their fists cocked. For a few heartbeats he was tempted to go with the older
man, to take ship to Thessaly and a new life far across the Great Green. But
instead he said, “Remember me, White-Eye.”

White-Eye nodded, and Xander thought he saw tears in his eyes before he
hurried away. Taking a deep breath, the young healer picked up his heavy
satchel. It was just starting to rain as he walked up the hill toward the city.

When news came of the fall of the barricade, Andromache was installed in
Priam’s palace, the last refuge. With her were the two boys and her youngest
handmaid Anio.

On the day of Hektor’s death, when women and children had been allowed out of
the city, Axa had left tearfully with her three babies, bound for Phrygia and
the family of Mestares. She had begged the daughters of Ursos to go with her,
but the sisters had refused, saying that their father had died defending the
city and so would they. Andromache had made no effort to make them change their
minds. She had told them she respected their decision, though privately her
heart bled for their fate.

Then Penthesileia had gone to the barricade with the Thrakian archers. The
boy-king Periklos had come to Andromache himself and asked that Penthesileia be
released from her service. Andromache had been surprised, though she did not
doubt the girl’s skill with the bow and was moved by her courage. As
Penthesileia left with Periklos, Andromache was sure she would never see her
again.

The great palace was empty. Priam was in his apartments, she was told, but
she had not seen him. There were few servants, and even Andromache’s bodyguards
had been ordered to the barricade. The boys were playing noisily, excited to be
in a new home. Andromache felt frustrated by her confinement. She left the boys
and walked down to the empty
megaron.

She seldom had lingered in that great room in recent years. It held only
memories of death and horror. On a whim she walked over to Priam’s carved,
gold-encrusted throne and sat down. She looked around at the high stone walls
decorated with the shields of heroes. The shield of Argurios was there, the
shield of Hektor now beside it. She gazed at the great stairway where Argurios
had been wounded fatally. The silence in the
megaron
echoed off the high
stone walls, and the distant sound of clashing metal and shouting men seemed as
thin and fragile as the twittering of birds on a summer afternoon.

She looked up at the shield of Hektor, and one hand fell to touch the belt
around her hips. It was cunningly crafted of bronze disks threaded with gold
wire, marking her as a Woman of the Horse.

For the first time in days she was alone, and in that great empty stone
chamber she felt her control slipping. Tears started to roll down her cheeks.
They called him the Prince of War, but she had never seen Hektor as a warrior,
only a kind, compassionate man shouldering burdens that no man should have had
to endure. She remembered that moment in the palace gardens when she had watched
him playing in the dust with Astyanax, an expression of deep tenderness on his
face that had wrenched her heart. She felt an agonizing stab of guilt—so
physical that she doubled over from the pain—that she had never loved Hektor as
he deserved, that he had gone to his death knowing she yearned not for him but
for another man.

Then she wondered, as she did each day, where the
Xanthos
was and
whether Helikaon still lived. Her traitor heart, one moment mourning Hektor, now
ached for Helikaon. The blissful time she had spent with him, more than a
hundred days, on their voyage west now seemed as though it had happened in
another lifetime.

Sitting on the high golden throne, she wept for both of the men she loved.

Suddenly she started and swiped the tears from her cheeks. A young messenger,
hardly more than a boy, raced in through the high doorway. He stopped, gawping
to see her on Priam’s throne, and she stood up.

“The enemy have broken through, lady. They are coming!”

Andromache stood by the throne, feeling a tension that was almost unbearable.
She knew she should be doing something, but she did not know what. Outside she
heard the sound of distant thunder rolling over the sea.

After what seemed a lifetime of waiting, two soldiers staggered into the
megaron,
supporting a comrade. All three were injured, but the one in the
middle was dying, she could see. Blood was pumping out of a deep gash in his
leg, and she knew that a vital blood vessel had been torn.

“Take him to the queen’s apartments,” she ordered, pointing up the stone
staircase. “We will care for the wounded there.” She wondered how many healers,
if any, were still in the city.

Soon people started pouring in through the doors: wounded soldiers, old men,
and a few women. There was fear and exhaustion on every face, and they all
looked to her to tell them what to do. She sent the wounded to the queen’s
apartments and ordered the women to tend to them as best they could. The men she
set to work stripping the weaponry off the walls.

At last Polites arrived, looking ten years older than when she last had seen
him two days before. His thin body was lost in someone else’s cavalry armor, and
he pulled the high helm off with evident relief.

“The enemy has won the city,” he told her briefly. “Our generals believe they
will not attack the palace until tomorrow, so we have time to prepare.”

“I have sent the wounded to the queen’s apartments,” she said. “There is some
food and plenty of water in the kitchens. We need an armory.” She pointed to
three women coming in with armfuls of spent arrows to be sorted through.

“Why are there still women here?” Polites asked with anguish. “Why did they
not leave when they could?”

“For the same reason you did not, Polites,” Andromache replied. “They are
Trojans who are prepared to stay and die for their city, like you. You could
have left long ago, as Kreusa did. Or you could have fled in the days after the
taking of King’s Joy. These women made the same decision you did. Respect them
for it.”

“See that they stay within the palace,” Polites told her. “The city will be a
place of horror tonight for anyone outside the palace walls. Agamemnon’s troops
will be working off the frustrations of an idle summer. No one will be left
alive.”

Andromache thought of her two boys. They were safe for the moment but would
not be for long. Feeling panic rising in her breast, she ruthlessly pushed it
down.

“Where is Polydorus?” she asked Polites briskly. “He should be here. He has
planned the defense of the palace.”

“I saw him at the barricade,” he answered. “He is a soldier. He could not
wait here doing nothing while the city was under attack.”

“Sometimes it is hardest just to wait and do nothing.” She felt anger
replacing the rising panic. “Polydorus was charged with command of the palace.
He has deserted his post—and his king.”

“You are being too harsh, Andromache,” Polites chided her. “Polydorus has
always been a dutiful son of Troy. He found it frustrating looking after Father.
His city is in danger. He is a soldier,” he repeated.

Andromache looked at him with surprise. “As a soldier,” she said scornfully,
“his duty was to look after the king, not to fight in the streets. Any common
soldier can do that. Polydorus was honored for his valiant part in the palace
siege by being made the king’s aide, Priam’s bodyguard. He has now abandoned the
king. How can you defend him, Polites?”

Frowning, he answered, “Sometimes there is a higher duty, Sister, a duty to
one’s conscience.”

Andromache took a deep breath and sighed. “I am sorry, Polites. I should not
be arguing with you. It is getting dark, and I must say good night to my boys.
Then, if Polydorus has not returned, we will get together and make our own
plans. Perhaps the generals will be here by then.”

She hurried up the stone staircase, feeling her heart beating noisily.
Ruefully she admitted to herself that fear for her boys had expressed itself as
anger. In the queen’s apartments she made her way to the boys’ bedchamber. Anio
was not to be seen. Then she remembered she had told the girl to find cloth to
make bandages. She found little Dex on his own, sitting on the floor playing
with his favorite toy, a battered wooden horse with blue eyes he had brought
from Dardanos.

She looked around, then squatted down with the boy.

“Where is Astyanax?” she asked him, pushing his fair fringe back off his
face.

“He went with the man,” the child said, handing her the toy to play with.

She frowned, and a trickle of dread entered her heart. She heard again the
distant sound of thunder. “What man, Dex?”

“The old man took him,” he told her.

“I will find your son,” the warrior Kalliades promised Andromache. “I will
not return to you without him.”

They had searched the palace high and low, but there was no sign of Astyanax
or of Priam. The king’s body servant told Polites he had left the old man
wrapped in a blanket in a chair on the balcony. He was feeble and lost, the man
said defensively, living in the comforting world of the distant past. Since the
death of Hektor he had lived there all the time.

Back in the
megaron,
Kalliades swiftly stripped off his armor until he
wore only his bronze-reinforced leather kilt and sandals. “Find a dark cloak for
me to wear,” he told Andromache. She glanced at him, annoyance overtaking the
anxiety in her eyes, but she gestured to one of her handmaids.

“Make that two,” Banokles said, loosening his breastplate.

“General,” Kalliades urged his comrade. “You will be vital here to rally the
troops.”

“They won’t attack tonight,” the blond warrior replied confidently.

“No,” Kalliades agreed. “Agamemnon will give them free rein tonight to
plunder as they will. But by first light we must be ready for them. We have
barely enough soldiers left to man the palace walls as it is. Our warriors trust
you and will fight to the death for you.”

Polites stepped forward nervously. “I will go with you, Kalliades,” he
suggested, “if you will have me. I know my father, and I can guess where he will
be going.”

He had expected the tall warrior to refuse his aid, but instead Kalliades
said, “Thank you, lord. He cannot have gotten far. We can only hope he has not
been captured, and the boy with him.”

The handmaid returned with two dark hooded cloaks. Kalliades swiftly donned
his sword belt and then the cloak. Polites watched him and then awkwardly did
the same.

Kalliades told the prince, “The storm will be our ally tonight. We will stay
in the shadows until we find two Mykene warriors. Then we will take their
armor.”

Polites nodded without speaking, fearing his voice would quaver. He had never
been a warrior. He had left that to his brothers Hektor, Agathon, and Dios. He
always had been in awe of soldiers who spoke as casually of killing as he did of
cutting his roses.

Kalliades told Andromache, “Soon we will need your women with their bows.
Place them on the front palace balcony to cover any retreat from the palace
walls. If the walls and courtyard are taken, pull them back to the gallery of
the
megaron.
Finally, if it comes to that, retreat to the queen’s
apartments.”

She nodded. “They will do us proud,” she promised him.

As they left the palace, Kalliades paused and Polites looked around.
Torrential rain was driving at them sideways, lashed by a vicious wind.
Lightning lit the sky to the north, and beyond the walls to their left a huge
brush fire was burning. They could see no enemy troops, although shouts,
screams, and the clash of metal echoed from lower in the city.

“Which way?” he asked, his voice whipped away by the gusting wind.

Polites put his mouth close to the warrior’s ear. “The great tower,” he
shouted.

Kalliades raised an eyebrow, and Polites nodded vigorously. “I’m sure of it,”
he yelled.

They set off and made swift progress, running through the streets down toward
the tower. Whenever Kalliades paused, Polites froze, his heart thumping. Then
the tall warrior would lope on, staying in narrow alleys and skirting open
spaces. There were fires everywhere despite the driving rain. They saw many
bodies—some townsfolk but mostly soldiers—and several wounded men. Kalliades
stopped only once, kneeling to speak briefly to a badly wounded Trojan soldier
who lay with his entrails strewn around him. Kalliades took out a curved dagger
and sliced the man’s throat, then moved on, his expression grim.

In one narrow alleyway Kalliades stopped when they heard the sound of
marching feet above the racket of the rain. Coming toward them through the
darkness were enemy soldiers carrying torches. They were not running, laughing,
or shouting; they marched in silence, as if on a mission. Kalliades shoved
Polites back into the nearest doorway, but it was shallow and they would be seen
once the soldiers came close. Kalliades opened the door and stepped through.
Polites followed, his heart in his mouth.

They were in a courtyard. More than a dozen Mykene soldiers were in there,
too, but their attention was on someone unseen on the ground. The pair heard an
agonized cry and a woman’s voice begging. Polites looked in anguish at
Kalliades. The warrior’s face darkened, but he shook his head. Polites saw pain
in his eyes.

Unnoticed, they slipped back into the alley and ran on. Polites saw that
Kalliades was limping slightly. He wondered at the severity of a wound that
would make a warrior like Kalliades limp.

At last they found two Mykene soldiers in armor. One was leaning against a
wall, hands on hips, as if getting his breath back. The other was berating him
about something, leaning in and shouting in his ear. Kalliades gestured to
Polites to wait. Then he walked over to them. They both glanced up, unconcerned.
Before they could move, Kalliades sliced his dagger across the throat of one.
The other leaped back, cursing and drawing his sword. He scowled at Kalliades
and lunged at the warrior’s face. Kalliades swayed and ducked in one graceful
movement, then sank his knife into the man’s groin. Only then did he unsheathe
his sword. The Mykene fought on bravely for a few heartbeats, then collapsed
beside his comrade. Polites could see his lifeblood pumping out onto the
rain-soaked street. Glancing around, Kalliades swiftly started to remove the
dead man’s armor, handing it to Polites to put on. By then the other man was
dead, too, and Kalliades donned his armor.