Fall of Kings (55 page)

They moved on, and the base of the great tower was within sight when they
encountered another band of Mykene soldiers. The leader beckoned them to him,
and Kalliades staggered up, emphasizing his limp.

“Your name, soldier?” the leader demanded.

“Kleitos of the Panthers, sir,” Kalliades replied, slurring a little. “This
is Thoas. He’s drunk.”

“We are hunting for children,” the leader told him. “Agamemnon King wants any
brats still in the city found and taken to him.”

“We’re looking for women, not their brats.” Kalliades laughed.

The leader grinned. “Of course you are, soldier, but the two often come
together. And Agamemnon is offering a silver ring for any child brought to him.
A silver ring will buy you as many women as you need when we get home.”

“I’ll bear it in mind,” Kalliades said cheerfully. “But better to ride one
woman now than ten as a promise. And tonight’s will cost me nothing!” He turned
to Polites. “Keep up, you drunken sot,” he shouted, and they hurried on.

The area by the Scaean Gate, a killing ground only the day before, was empty
of life. A few blackened corpses lay in the wetness, but no one living could be
seen. The great gate was closed and the heavy locking bar in place, trapping
them inside the city as effectively as it once had kept the enemy out.

Polites looked up at the tower and for a moment thought he saw movement at
the battlement door. He pointed, and Kalliades narrowed his eyes.

“Are you sure?” the warrior asked, doubt written across his face. Polites
nodded, and they both made for the stone steps. Kalliades ran up lightly despite
the heavy armor and his injured leg. Polites followed more slowly.

Inside the tower it was pitch black, but it was a relief to get out of the
wind. The only sound now was the drumming of rain on the wooden roof far above.
They no longer had to yell to each other.

Polites advised the warrior, “Stay to the left, as close to the wall as you
can. The steps are well worn, but they should not be slippery.”

The climb in total darkness was terrifying even for Polites, who had been
this way by torchlight so many times. He was assailed by doubts now. Could Priam
have gotten this far? Could he have taken Astyanax up the steps in total
darkness? He realized they should have checked at the bottom of the tower first
to see if there was a small body there. By the time they reached the top,
Polites had convinced himself they were chasing chimeras.

At last he felt the clean night air on his face and the rain, and he saw
Kalliades step out onto the roof ahead of him. The sky had lightened, and he
realized it was almost dawn. The thunder and lightning went on unabated. A new
fear struck him. He had heard of men in armor being struck by lightning.

He stepped onto the roof. For a heartbeat he could see nothing, his senses
blunted by the wind whipping rain across the high tower. Then the thunder rolled
overhead, and a brilliant flash of lightning forked down through the sky. By its
light they could see Priam standing on the parapet on the far side. His long
white hair and gray robe were flying behind him in the wind, as if he were
falling already. He held the child out in front of him, motionless in his arms.

His heart hammering in his chest, Polites stepped toward his father, fearing
he would plunge out of sight at any moment.

Priam turned and saw him.

“What are you doing, Polites, you fool?” The king’s voice, loud and rich with
contempt, was carried toward them on the wind. “I did not order you here.”

“I came to find the boy, Father. Andromache was concerned. She did not know
where he was.” Polites could see the child’s face now. His blue eyes were open,
and he stared at Polites in terror.

“He is with his father,” the king told him. “Who else can keep him safe,
Polites? Not you, you fool. Nor his whore of a mother. I am showing him to great
Zeus. He is the Eagle Child and precious to the All-Father.”

His father? Polites wondered what he meant. Beside him Kalliades asked him
with wonder, “How did he manage to get here without being captured?”

Polites replied, “The king knows his city better than anyone. And when he is
lucid, he is as cunning as three foxes.”

As they spoke, Priam looked down at the child, and confusion appeared on his
features. They saw his pale face fall into its usual picture of fear and
despair.

Polites stepped forward quickly, fearing that the old man would drop the boy
in his panic. “Let me take baby Hektor,” he offered. “The queen is asking for
him.”

Priam looked down at the child. “Hektor,” he crooned. “My best boy.”

Polites reached out, and Priam handed Astyanax over. Only then did the boy
begin to cry quietly. Polites thrust him at Kalliades.

“Take him to his mother,” he ordered.

Kalliades looked at him and then at the king, hesitating.

“Go now, Kalliades. He must be saved. He is the Eagle Child.”

Kalliades frowned. The words clearly meant nothing to him, but he nodded.
“Yes, lord,” he said, and in an instant he was gone, disappearing swiftly down
the steps, the boy in his arms.

“Come, Father, you must rest,” Polites said gently, taking his father’s hand
and drawing him down from the parapet.

“Where am I?” the old man cried fearfully. “I don’t know where I am.”

“We are on the Great Tower of Ilion, Father. We are watching for Troy’s
enemies. When they come, we will destroy them.”

The old man nodded and slumped to the floor. Polites could see that he was
beyond exhaustion. Polites sat down as well and started removing some of his
armor. He knew they both would die there.

When at last the enemy came, there were just two of them, Mykene soldiers.
One was big, with long unkempt red hair and a full beard. The other was thin and
small. They climbed up onto the roof, and both grinned, exchanging feral glances
as they saw the sick old man and his son.

Polites stood wearily, dragging out his sword and trying to remember the
lessons he had been taught in the long-distant past. Two-handed, he held the
blade up before him and stepped in front of his father.

The redheaded soldier unsheathed his sword and walked toward him. The other
stood and watched, smiling in anticipation.

The soldier lunged at his chest, but Polites skipped nervously back, and the
sword glanced off the bronze disks of his breastplate. The soldier feinted to
the left, and as Polites moved slowly to block the move, he stepped in and sank
the blade into Polites’ side. It felt like the blow of a hammer. His legs
crumpled, and he went down on the rain-soaked roof, agony coursing through him.

Polites looked up as the soldier raised his sword for the killing blow. Then
he suddenly was showered with blood as the man’s throat was ripped open by an
expertly thrown dagger. Priam stepped forward, growling, “Die, you dogs!” and
picked up the dead man’s sword.

The other Mykene ran in, fury on his face. “By Hades, you’ll pay for that,
you old bastard!” he shouted, and swung his sword at the king in a ferocious
arc. Priam got his sword up, and the blades clashed, sparks flying in the
half-light.

The king stumbled back; then his old legs failed him, and he went down on one
knee.

As the soldier loomed over him, Polites snatched the dagger from the dead
man’s throat and lunged at the attacker’s inner thigh. He was too weak and
missed his target, merely cutting the skin. But as the soldier swung around at
him, Priam hefted the sword and plunged it into the man’s back. The Mykene fell
to his knees, his eyes staring, then toppled forward, dead.

Drowning in a sea of pain, Polites dragged himself over to the king. “You
killed them, Father,” he panted weakly. “But there will be more.”

Priam bared his teeth in a confident grin. “My son will save us,” he
promised. “Hektor will arrive in time. Hektor never lets me down.”

Polites nodded, clutching his side and watching the blood pumping through his
fingers. “He is a good son,” he agreed sadly. Then he closed his eyes and slept.

It was full daylight when he opened his eyes again. More than a dozen Mykene
warriors were walking toward them across the roof. Polites sighed and tried to
move, but his limbs would not work, and he lay there helpless. He was terribly
tired, but he felt no fear. He turned his head and saw that his father somehow
had climbed back onto the parapet. The words of Kassandra came to him: “
Priam
will outlive all his sons.
” He thought of her and smiled.

“Goodbye, Father,” he whispered as the old man threw himself from the tower.
The last thing he saw was a sword swinging at his neck.

The storm had swept in from Thraki, from the cold heights of the Rhodope
Mountains. Its burden of icy rain did little to slow the north wind, a wind
strong enough to flay the roofs from peasants’ homes and fishermen’s huts and
tear stout branches from trees. Centuries-old oaks, their deep roots loosened in
the bone-dry summer, toppled under its might on the slopes of Mount Ida, and
wild animals ran for shelter from its howling fury.

The gold roof of Priam’s palace clattered in the gale as the wind tried to
pry its precious covering free. All across the city terra-cotta roof tiles were
flung about the streets like leaves, and the walls of ruined palaces collapsed.

On the steep hillside outside Troy, Khalkeus the bronzesmith looked into the
teeth of the gale and rejoiced.

“Boreas, the north wind. The Devourer, they call him,” he muttered to himself
happily. “Let the Devourer eat up the star stones and spit them out for me!”

He gazed up proudly at the towering furnace, the biggest he had built after
many failed attempts. The stone tower was square at the base, just two paces to
a side, yet it was as high as the walls of the city. His first attempt had
toppled over, confounding his calculations of the necessary thickness of the
walls. The second and third had been torn down by enemy soldiers while he had
hidden close by in the woods, seething with fury at their casual destruction of
his labor. But he had braved the Mykene camp and spoken to Agamemnon. Since then
the soldiers had left him alone. His last two attempts had been successful in
their way. They had built up the necessary heat, but both had burned down,
taking the remaining structures on the hillside with them. Khalkeus simply had
started again.

“Patience, patience,” he told himself aloud. “Nothing useful was ever wrought
without patience.”

He regretted that he had no one to discuss the project with. The Golden One
would have been interested, would have understood the construction of the
furnace and praised Khalkeus for the valuable work he was doing. With the metal
of Ares, Khalkeus would make the perfect sword, one that would not bend or break
and that never would get dull.

He had been pleasantly surprised by his conversation with Agamemnon. Khalkeus
loathed the Mykene as a race. They were plunderers, pirates, and murderers. He
always had imagined that their king would be a brute without intelligence or
imagination. But he had asked thoughtful questions about Khalkeus’ work and
promised to fund his experiments once the war was over. Khalkeus did not trust
him entirely, but the bronzesmith certainly could expect no more support from
the Trojans.

A tiny flicker of doubt entered his mind. Another weapon, Khalkeus? he asked
himself. After seeing so many men die because of your inventions, do you really
want to create another weapon to put in the hands of violent men? He shook his
head, shaking free the annoying thought.

Khalkeus had forecast the storm as early as the previous day, and to heat up
the furnace he had worked all night and all day. Like a madman, he chortled to
himself, the Madman from Miletos!

The furnace had been filled with dry olive branches and white limestone chips
for purity. Then he had piled in the batches of gray sponges that were all he
had succeeded in making from smelting the red rocks. At the bottom of the
furnace was a square door, and inside the door was a shallow pottery bowl to
receive the molten metal. At the base of the bowl a tube ran out of the furnace
to the sword-shaped casting mold. The door controlled the updraft. It was now
fully open, and the ferocious wind gusting around the plateau had built up the
heat far beyond what he had achieved before.

Nervously, Khalkeus stepped back a few more paces from the intense heat. I
cannot stop it now, he told himself. It is in the hands of the gods. Rolling
thunder overhead scarcely could be heard above the deafening roar of the
furnace. The howl was like the voice of Cerberus in the gathering darkness.

Then, just as he had feared and dreaded, the huge furnace trembled and
suddenly shattered. A roaring blast of heat ripped across the hillside, knocking
Khalkeus over. As the fire leaped out from its confines, rocks and debris rained
down, narrowly missing him. Half-dazed, he cried out in frustration and beat
feverishly at his singed hair and beard.

Rolling over, he crawled on trembling limbs to the edge of the hill and
looked over, shielding his eyes from the blaze. Only paces from where he lay, in
the middle of the debris, he saw with amazement that the furnace had fulfilled
its task before its destruction. The furious heat had turned the star metal to
liquid, and it had poured, as intended, into the sword mold even as the chimney
had collapsed. The cover over the casting had been torn away, and rain was
quenching the red-hot metal.

Hope surged in the old man’s breast. There was a sword, but was it the
perfect sword he had dreamed of?

As Khalkeus watched, unbelieving, the last section of chimney toppled slowly
toward the sword mold. The smith cried out in an agony of fear as it hit the
edge of it, flipping it over, throwing the red-hot sword sizzling into the mud.

Khalkeus scrambled down toward it, struggling to put on the heavy leather
gauntlets that hung around his neck. As he touched the glowing sword, the glove
instantly smoldered, and he snatched his hand away. He sat gazing greedily at
the weapon, only half-aware that the fire had spread to the remaining trees and
shrubby undergrowth unscathed by previous blazes.