Agamemnon always answered with upraised palms and silence for a terrible minute. “There was no sign of struggle,” he would say at last. “No blood. No decaying bodies feeding the starving dogs and circling birds.”
And always, at every encampment, the brave Argive crews and bodyguards and foot soldiers and captains who had accompanied Agamemnon homeward were having their own private conversations with others of their rank. By dawn, everyone had heard the terrible news, and palsied terror was giving way to impotent rage.
Menelaus knew that this was perfect for their purpose—the Atridae brothers, Agamemnon and Menelaus—to turn the Acheaens not only against the Trojans once again and to finish this war, but to overthrow the dictatorship of fleet-footed Achilles. Within days, if not hours, Agamemnon would once again be commander in chief.
At dawn, Agamemnon had finished his duty of reporting to all the Greeks, the great captains had wandered away—Diomedes back to his tent, the Great Telamonian Ajax, who had wept like a child when he heard that Salamis had been found as empty as all the other homelands—and Odysseus, Idomeneus, and Little Ajax, who had cried out in pain with all his men from Locris when Agamemnon had told them the news, and even garrulous old Nestor—all had wandered away at dawn to catch a few hours’ restless sleep.
“So tell me the news of the War with the Gods,” said Agamemnon to Menelaus as the two brothers sat alone in center of their Lacadaemon encampment, surrounded by rings of loyal captains, bodyguards, and spearmen. These men stayed far enough away to let their lords converse in private.
Red-haired Menelaus told his older brother what news there was—the ignoble daily battles between moravec wizardry and the gods’ divine weapons, the occasional single combat—the death of Paris and a hundred lesser names, both Trojan and Achaean—and about the funeral just finished. The corpse-fire smoke had ceased to rise and the flames above the wall of Troy had disappeared from sight only an hour earlier.
“Good riddance,” said royal Agamemnon, his strong white teeth gnawing off a strip of the suckling pig they’d roasted for his breakfast. “I’m only sorry Apollo killed Paris… I wanted to do the job myself.”
Menelaus laughed, ate some of the suckling pig himself, washed it down with breakfast wine, and told his dear brother about Paris’s first wife, Oenone, appearing out of nowhere and of her self-immolation.
Agamemnon laughed at this. “Would that it had been your bitch of a wife, Helen, who’d been so moved to throw herself into the flames, Brother.”
Menelaus nodded at this, but he felt his heart lurch at the sound of Helen’s name. He told Agamemnon of Oenone’s ravings about Philoctetes, not Apollo, being the cause of Paris’s death, and about the anger that had swept through the Trojan ranks, causing the small contingent of Achaeans to beat a hasty retreat from the city.
Agamemnon slapped his thigh. “Wonderful! It’s the penultimate stone set in place. Within forty-eight hours, I’ll stir this discontent into action throughout the Achaean ranks. We’ll be at war with the Trojans again before the week is out, Brother. I swear this on the stones and dirt of our father’s barrow.”
“But the gods …” began Menelaus.
“The gods will be as they were,” he said with what sounded like complete confidence. “Zeus neutral. Some helping the mewling, doomed Trojans. Most allying themselves with us. But this time we’ll finish the job. Ilium will be ashes within the fortnight… as sure as Paris is nothing but bones and ashes this morning.”
Menelaus nodded. He knew that he should ask questions about how his brother hoped to mend the peace with the gods again, as well as overthrow the invincible Achilles, but he ached to discuss a more pressing topic.
“I saw Helen,” he said, hearing his own voice stumble at his wife’s name. “I was within seconds of killing her.”
Agamemnon wiped grease from his mouth and beard, drank from a silver cup, and raised one eyebrow to show that he was listening.
Menelaus described his firm resolve and opportunity to get to Helen—and how both were ruined by Oenone’s sudden appearance and her dying accusations against Philoctetes. “We were lucky to get out of the city alive,” he said again.
Agamemnon squinted toward the distant walls. Somewhere a moravec siren wailed and missiles hurtled skyward toward some unseen Olympian target. The forcefield over the main Achaean camp hummed into a deeper tone of readiness.
“You should kill her today,” said Menelaus’ older and wiser brother. “Now. This morning.”
“This morning?” Menelaus licked his lips. Despite the pig grease, they were dry.
“This morning,” repeated the once and future commander in chief of all the Greek armies assembled to sack Troy. “Within a day or so, the opening rift between our men and those dog-spittle Trojans will be so great that the cowards will be closing and bolting their fucking Scaean Gate again.”
Menelaus looked toward the city. Its walls were rose-colored in the light of the rising winter sun. He was very confused. “They won’t allow me in by myself …” he began.
“Go in disguise,” interrupted Agamemnon. The royal king drank again and belched. “Think as Odysseus would think… as some crafty weasel would think.”
Menelaus, as proud a man as his brother or any other Achaean hero in his own way, wasn’t sure he appreciated that comparison. “How can I disguise myself?”
Agamemnon gestured toward his own royal tent, its scarlet silk billowing again nearby. “I have the lion skin and old bore-tusk wraparound helmet that Diomedes wore when he and Odysseus attempted to steal the Palladian from Troy last year,” he said. “With that strange helmet hiding your red hair and the tusks hiding your beard—not to mention the lion skin concealing your glorious Achaean armor—the sleepy guards at the gate will think you another barbarian ally of theirs and let you pass without challenge. But go quickly—before the guard changes and before the gates are locked to us for the duration of Ilium’s doomed existence.”
Menelaus had to think about this for only a few seconds. Then he rose, clasped his brother firmly on the shoulder, and went into the tent to gather his disguise and to arm himself with more killing blades.
8
The moon Phobos looked like a huge, grooved, dusty olive with bright lights encircling the concave end. Mahnmut told Hockenberry that the hollowed tip was a giant crater called Stickney and that the lights were the moravec base.
The ride up had not been without some adrenaline flow for Hockenberry. He’d seen enough of the moravec hornets at short range to notice that none of them seemed to have windows or ports, so he assumed the ride would be a blind one, except perhaps for some TV monitors. He’d underestimated asteroid-belt moravec technology—for all the hornets were from the rockvecs according to Mahnmut. Hockenberry had also assumed there would be acceleration couches or Twentieth Century space-shuttle-style chairs with huge straps and buckles.
There were no chairs. No visible means of support. Invisible force-fields enfolded Hockenberry and the small moravec as they seemed to sit on thin air. Holograms—or some sort of three-dimensional projections so real that there was no sense of projection—surrounded them on three sides and beneath them. Not only were they sitting on invisible chairs, the invisible chairs and their bodies were suspended over a two mile drop as the hornet flashed through the Hole and climbed for altitude to the south of Olympus Mons.
Hockenberry screamed.
“Does the display bother you?” asked Mahnmut.