Then Agenor—a Trojan fighter, son of Antenor, father of Echeclus (both of whom I’ve seen on the streets of Ilium)—slips between the battling Achaeans and catches sight of Elephenor’s exposed ribs as the big man bends low beneath the protection of his shield to finish stripping Echepolus’ corpse. Agenor leaps forward and stabs his spear into Elephenor’s side, splintering ribs and pulping the big man’s heart into a shapeless mass. Elephenor vomits blood and collapses. More Trojan fighters surge forward, beating off the Achaean attack, as Agenor rips his spear free and begins to strip Elephenor of his war belt and sheaves and chestplate. Other Trojans drag Echepolus’ near-nude body back toward Trojan lines.
The fighting begins to swirl around these fallen men. The Achaean called Ajax—Big Ajax, the so-called Telemonian Ajax from Salamis, not to be confused with Little Ajax, who commands the Locrisians—hacks his way forward, sheaths his sword, and uses his spear to cut down a very young Trojan named Simoisius, who has come forward to cover Agenor’s retreat.
Just a week earlier, in the walled safety of Ilium’s quiet parks, while morphed as the Trojan Sthenelus, I had drunk wine and swapped ribald stories with Simoisius. The sixteen-year-old boy—never wed, never even bedded by a woman—had told me about how his father, Anthemion, had named him after the Simois River, which runs right next to their modest home a mile from the walls of the city. Simoisius had not yet turned six when the black ships of the Achaeans had first appeared on the horizon and, until a few weeks ago, his father had refused to allow the sensitive boy to join the army outside Ilium’s walls. Simoisius admitted to me that he was terrified of dying—not so much of death itself, he said, but of dying before he ever touched a woman’s breast or felt what it was like to be in love.
Now Big Ajax lets out a cry and thrusts his spear forward—batting aside Simoisius’ shield and striking the boy’s chest above the right nipple, shattering his shoulder and running the bronze point through and out until it protrudes a foot beyond the boy’s mangled back. Simoisius staggers to his knees and stares in astonishment—first at Ajax and then at the spear protruding from his chest. Big Ajax sets his sandaled foot on Simoisius’ face and rips the spear free, allowing the boy’s body to fall facefirst into the blood-dampened dust. Big Ajax pounds his chestplate and roars for his men to follow him.
A Trojan named Antiphus, standing not more than twenty-five feet away, hurls his spear at Big Ajax. The spear misses its target but strikes an Achaean named Leucus in the groin even as Leucus is busy helping Odysseus haul off the corpse of another Trojan captain. The spear passes through Leucus’ groin and comes out his anus, the tip trailing curls of gray and red colon and intestine. Leucus falls on the Trojan captain’s corpse but lives another terrible moment, writhing, grasping the spear and trying to pull it from his groin but only succeeding in spilling more of his bowels into his own lap. All the time he is tugging at the spear, Leucus is also screaming and tugging at his friend Odysseus’ bloody arm.
Leucus dies at last, his eyes glazing over, one hand still tight around Antiphus’ spear and the other still clinging to Odysseus’ wrist. Odysseus breaks the dead man’s grip and whirls around, dark eyes blazing under the rim of his bronze helmet, seeking out a target—any target. Odysseus hurls his spear and rushes after it. More Achaeans follow him into the gap he creates in the Trojan lines.
Odysseus’ first spearshot kills Democoon, a bastard son of Ilium’s King Priam. I was in the city nine years ago on the morning Democoon arrived to help defend Priam’s Ilium. It was common knowledge that Priam had put the young man in charge of his famed racing stables in Abydos, a city northeast of Troy on the southern shore of the Hellespont, to keep him out of sight of Priam’s wife and legitimate sons. The horses stabled in Abydos were the fastest and finest in the world, and it was said that Democoon considered it an honor to be named stablemaster at so young an age. Now that young Trojan is in the act of turning his head toward Odysseus’ maddened war cry when the bronze spearpoint hits him in his left temple and passes through and out his right temple, knocking him off his feet and pinning his shattered skull to the side of an overturned chariot. Democoon literally never knew what hit him.
The Trojans are retreating all along the line now, falling back before the fury of Odysseus and Big Ajax, trying to haul their noble dead when possible, abandoning them when not.
Hector, Ilium’s greatest fighter and most honest man, leaps off his command chariot and wades into the retreat, trying to bring his spear and sword to bear, urging the Trojans to hold fast, but the Achaean attack is too strong at this salient, and even Hector gives ground, all the while urging the men to discipline. The Trojans fight and hack and cast spears as they retreat.
Morphed as a minor Trojan spearman, I fall back faster than most, staying out of spear range, not afraid to be a coward. Earlier, I had cloaked myself from mortal view and started to move forward to where I could see Athena behind Achaean lines—soon joined by Hera, both goddesses invisible to men—but the fighting had erupted too quickly and escalated too fiercely, so I’d left the front lines after Echepolus fell, trusting to my enhanced vision and shotgun microphone to keep me in touch with events.
Suddenly everything freezes. The air thickens. Spears stop in midair, blood ceases to flow. Men seconds away from dying get a reprieve they will never know about as all sound ceases, all motion stops.
The gods are playing games with time again.
Apollo arrives first, his chariot QTing into existence not far from Hector. Then the war god Ares flicks into sight, talks to Athena and Hera an angry minute, and uses his own chariot to fly over the battle lines, landing near Apollo. Aphrodite joins them, glancing my way—to where I pretend to be frozen in place like the other mortals—for only an instant before smiling and talking to her two Trojan-loving allies, Ares and Apollo. I watch her out of the corner of my eye as the goddess stands there, pointing and gesturing toward the battlefield like a big-breasted George Patton.
The gods are here to fight.
Apollo raises his hand, sound crashes in, time begins again like a tsunami of dust and motion, and the killing resumes in earnest.
10
Paris Crater
Ada, Harman, and Hannah waited the two days usually observed as a minimum decent interval after a firmary visit, and then faxed to Paris Crater to find Daeman. It was late and dark and chilly there and—they discovered as soon they stepped out from under the Guarded Lion faxnode roof—raining. Harman found them a covered barouche and a voynix pulled them northwest along a dried riverbed filled with white skulls, past miles of tumbledown buildings.
“I’ve never been to Paris Crater,” said Hannah. The young woman, just two months shy of her First Twenty, did not like big cities. PC was one of the most populated faxnodes on Earth, with some 25,000 semipermanent residents.
“It’s one reason I faxed us to the Guarded Lion node rather than a port called Invalid Hotel that’s closer to where Daeman lives on the rim,” said Ada. “Everything about this town is ancient. It’s worth taking one’s time to look around.”
Hannah nodded, but doubtfully. The row upon row of stone and steel buildings, most sheathed in shiny everplas, looked empty and dark and cheaply slick in the rain. Servitors and glow globes floated purposefully here and there down the dark streets, voynix stood silent and still on corners, but very few humans were visible. Then again, as Harman pointed out, it was after 10 p.m. Even a city as cosmopolitan as Paris Crater had to sleep.
“That’s interesting,” said Hannah, pointing to the structure rising a thousand feet above the city.