Fully armed now except for his spear, Achilles tests himself in his gear like an NFL lineman making sure his shoulder pads are set. The man-killer spins on his heels to see that his greaves are tightly fitted and his breastplate tight, but not so tight that he cannot turn and twist and dodge and thrust with ease. Then he runs a few paces, making sure that everything from his high-laced sandals to his helmet stays in place. Finally, Achilles lifts his shield, raises his hand over his shoulder, and pulls free his sword, all in a single movement so fluid that it looks as if he’s been doing it since birth.
He resheaths the sword and says, “I’m ready, Hockenberry.”
The captains follow us as I lead Achilles back to the beach where I left the Orphu shell. The guards have not gone near the huge crab-thing—which is still floating thanks to my levitation harnesses, a fact not lost on the gathering crowd of soldiers. I’ve decided to give a little magic show here, impressing Odysseus, Diomedes, and the other captains while earning a little more respect. Besides, I know that these other Achaeans, not blinded by fury as Achilles is, can’t be very enthusiastic about going up against the immortal gods they’ve worshiped and sacrificed to and obeyed since they were old enough to think. Theoretically, anything I can do now to reinforce Achilles’ dominion over his new army should be helpful to both of us.
“Grasp my forearm, son of Peleus,” I say softly. When Achilles does so, I twist the medallion with my free hand and we blink out.
Helen had said to meet them in the foyer of the baby Scamandrius’ nursery in Hector’s home. I’ve been there, so there is no problem visualizing it and we QT into an empty room. We are a few minutes early—the changing of the guards on the walls of Ilium won’t happen for four or five minutes yet. There’s a window in this foyer, and we can both see that we’re in the center of Ilium. The street traffic—oxcarts, horses and their clanking livery, marketplace shouts, the shuffle of hundreds and hundreds of pedestrians on cobblestones—comes through the open window as a reassuring background noise.
Achilles doesn’t seem to be nonplussed by quantum teleportation. I realize that the young man’s life has been full of divine magic. He was raised and educated by a centaur, for God’s sake. Now—knowing that he’s in the belly of the belly of the enemy beast in Ilium—he only sets his hand on the hilt of his sword, not drawing it, and looks at me as if to ask, “What next?”
The “what next” is a man crying out in terrible pain from the room next door, the nursery. I recognize the voice of the shouting man as Hector, although I have never heard him moan and cry like this. Women are also weeping and lamenting. Hector shouts again, as if in mortal pain.
I have no urge to go into that nursery, but Achilles acts for me, striding ahead, his hand still tight on the hilt of the half-drawn sword. I follow.
My Trojan women are all here—Helen, Hecuba, Laodice, Theano, and Andromache—but they don’t even turn as Achilles and I enter the nursery. Hector is here, in dusty, bloody battle gear, but he doesn’t even look up at his archenemy as Achilles stops and stares at what everyone’s horrified attention is focused on.
The baby’s hand-carved cradle is tipped over. Blood is splattered across the cradle wood, the marble floor, and the mosquito netting. The body of little Scamandrius, also lovingly known as Astyanax, not quite one year old, lies on the floor—hacked to pieces. The baby’s head is missing. The arms and legs have been lopped off. One pudgy little hand remains attached, but the other has been severed at the wrist. The baby’s royal swaddling clothes, with Hector’s family crest so delicately embroidered on the breast, is sodden with blood. Nearby lies the body of the wet nurse I’d seen on the battlements and sleeping here peacefully just one night ago. It looks as if she’s been mauled by some huge jungle cat, her dead arms still extended toward the overturned cradle as if she died attempting to protect the infant.
Servants are wailing and screaming in the background, but Andromache is speaking, her voice stunned but almost frighteningly calm. “It was the goddesses, Athena and Aphrodite, who did this, my lord and husband.”
Hector looks up and his face under his helmet is a terrible mask of shock and horror. His mouth hangs open, spittle dangling. His eyes are wide and red-rimmed. “Athena? Aphrodite? How can this be?”
“I came to the door from my chamber just an hour ago when I heard them talking to the nurse,” says Andromache. “Pallas Athena herself said to me that this sacrifice of our beloved Scamandrius is the will of Zeus. ‘A yearling heifer for sacrifice slaughter’ is the phrase the goddess used. I tried to argue, weeping, begging, but goddess Aphrodite willed me into silence, saying that Zeus’s will on this shall not be denied. Aphrodite said that the gods were ill pleased with the way of the war and with your failure to burn the black ships last night. And that they would take this sacrifice as warning.” She gestures to the butchered child on the floor. “I sent the fleetest servants to recall you from the battlefield, and called these women, my friends, to see me through my grief until you arrived, O Husband. We have not reentered this room until you came.”
Hector turns his wild face on us, but his gaze passes right over the silent Achilles. I don’t think he would have seen a cobra at his feet this moment. He’s blind with shock. All he can see is Scamandrius’ corpse—headless, bloodied, one little fist closed. Then Hector chokes out, “Andromache, wife, beloved, why aren’t you dead on the floor next to the nurse, fallen likewise in an attempt to save our child from the wrath of the immortals?”
Andromache lowers her face and weeps silently. “Athena kept me at the doorway behind an invisible wall of force while their divine power did this deed,” she says, tears falling on the bodice of her gown. I see now that her gown is bloodied where she must have knelt and hugged to her the remains of her slaughtered child. Irrelevant as it is right now, I think of watching television and seeing Jackie Kennedy on that distant day in November when I was a teenager.
Hector does not move to hug or console his wife. The servants’ wailings rise in pitch, but Hector remains silent a minute until he raises his scarred and muscled arm, closes a mighty fist, and snarls at the ceiling, “Then I defy you gods! From this moment on, Athena, Aphrodite, Zeus—all those gods I’ve served and honored, even to my life all these years—thou art my enemy.” He shakes his fist.
“Hector,” says Achilles.
Every head turns. Servants wail in terror. Helen throws her hands to her mouth in a perfect simulation of surprise. Hecuba screams.
Hector pulls his sword free and snarls with an expression almost resembling relief. Here is someone to vent my fury on. Here is someone to kill. I can read his thoughts on his face.
Achilles holds both palms up. “Hector, brother in grief. I come here today to share your grief and to offer you my right arm in battle.”
Hector has tensed to rush the man-killer but now the Trojan hero freezes, his face turning into a mask of confusion.
“Last night,” says Achilles, his callused palms still raised to show his empty hands, “Pallas Athena came to my tent in the Myrmidon encampment and killed my dearest friend—Patroclus dead by her hand—his body taken to Olympos to be fed to the carrion birds there.”
Still holding his sword, Hector says, “You saw this?”
“I spoke to her and witnessed it myself,” says Achilles. “It was the goddess. She cut down Patroclus then just as she has your son today—and for the same reasons. She told me these herself.”
Hector looks down at his sword hand as if his weapon and his arm have betrayed him.