The men looked up from their looting and pawing. Penthesilea estimated that there were about a hundred Achaeans standing around the women’s bodies, but none of these men was recognizable. There were none of the Greek heroes there. She looked five or six hundred yards farther on and saw a nobler group of men walking back to the main Achaean army.
“Look, more women,” said the mangiest of the men stripping the female corpses of their armor. “And this time they brought us horses.”
“What is your name?” asked Penthesilea.
The man grinned, showing missing and rotted teeth. “My name is Molion and I’m trying to decide whether to fuck you before or after I kill you, woman.”
“It must be a hard decision for such a limited mind,” Penthesilea said calmly. “I met a Molion once, but he was a Trojan, comrade to Thymbraeus. Also, that Molion was a living man, and you are a dead dog.”
Molion snarled and pulled his sword.
Without dismounting, Penthesilea swung her two-bladed axe and beheaded the man. Then she spurred her huge warhorse and rode down three others who barely had time to raise their shields before being trampled.
With an unearthly cry, her dozen Amazon comrades spurred into battle beside her, trampling, slashing, hacking, and spearing Achaeans as surely as if they were harvesting wheat with a scythe. Those men who stood to fight, died. Those who ran, died. Penthesilea herself killed the last seven men who had been stripping corpses alongside Molion and his three trampled friends.
Her comrades Euandra and Thermodoa had run down the last of the sniveling, groveling, begging Achaeans—an especially ugly, whining bastard who announced that his name was Thersites as he pleaded for mercy—and Penthesilea astounded her sisters by ordering them to let him go.
“Take this message to Achilles, Diomedes, the Ajaxes, Odysseus, Idomeneus, and the other Argive heroes I spy staring at us from yonder hill,” she boomed at Thersites. “Tell them that I, Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, daughter of Ares, beloved of Athena and Aphrodite, have come to end Achilles’ miserable life. Tell them that I will fight Achilles in single combat if he agrees, but that I and my Amazon comrades will kill all of them if they insist. Go, deliver my message.”
Ugly Thersites scampered away as fast as his shaking legs could take him.
Her good right arm, unbeautiful but totally bold Clonia, rode up next to her. “My Queen, what are you saying? We can’t fight all of the Achaean heroes. Any one of them is legend… together they are all but invincible, more than a match for any thirteen Amazons who have ever lived.”
“Be calm and resolute, my sister,” said Penthesilea. “Our victory is as much in the will of the gods as in our own strong hands. When Achilles falls dead, the other Achaeans will run—as they’ve run from Hector and mere Trojans when far lesser leaders of theirs have fallen or been wounded. And when they run, we will swing about, ride hard, pass back through that accursed Hole, and burn their ships before these so-called heroes can rally.”
“We will follow you into death, My Queen,” murmured Clonia, “just as we have followed you to glory in the past.”
“To glory again, my beloved sister,” said Penthesilea. “Look. That ratfaced dog Thersites has delivered our message and the Achaean captains are walking this way. See how Achilles’ armor gleams more brightly than any other’s. Let us meet them on the clean battlefield there.”
She spurred her huge horse and the thirteen Amazons galloped forward together toward Achilles and the Achaeans.
19
“What blue beam?” said Hockenberry.
They had been discussing the disappearance of this Ilium-era Earth’s population—all those outside a two-hundred-mile-radius of Troy—as Mahnmut guided the hornet down toward Mars, Olympos, and the Brane Hole.
“It’s a blue beam stabbing up from Delphi, in the Peloponnesus,” said the moravec. “It appeared the day the rest of the human population here disappeared. We thought it was composed of tachyons, but now we’re not sure. There’s a theory—just a theory—that all of the other humans were reduced to their basic Calabi-Yau string components, encoded, and fired into interstellar space on that beam.”
“It comes from Delphi?” repeated Hockenberry. He didn’t know a thing about tachyons or Calabi-Whatsis strings, but he knew quite a bit about Delphi and its oracle.
“Yes, I could show it to you if you have another ten minutes or so before you have to get back,” said Mahnmut. “The odd thing is that there’s a similar blue beam coming up from our present-day Earth, the one we’re headed for, but it’s coming from the city of Jerusalem.”
“Jerusalem,” repeated Hockenberry. The hornet was rocking and pitching as it nosed down toward the Hole and Hockenberry was gripping the invisible arms of the invisible forcefield chair. “The beams go up into the air? Into space? To where?”
“We don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be any destination. The beams stay on for quite a long time and rotate with the Earth, of course, but they pass out of the solar system—both Earth solar systems—and neither one seems to be aimed at any particular star or globular cluster or galaxy. But the blue beams are two-way. That is, there is a flow of tachyonic energy returning to Delphi—and presumably to Jerusalem—so that…”
“Wait,” interrupted Hockenberry. “Did you see that?”
They had just passed through the Brane Hole, skimming just under its upper arc.
“I did,” said Mahnmut. “It was just a blur, but it looked as if humans were fighting humans back there where the Achaeans generally keep their front lines near Olympos. And look—up ahead.” The moravec magnified the holographic windows and Hockenberry could see Greeks and Trojans fighting outside the walls of Ilium. The Scaean Gates—open these eight months of the alliance—were closed.
“Jesus Christ,” whispered Hockenberry.
“Yes.”
“Mahnmut, can we go back to where we saw the first signs of fighting? On the Mars side of the Brane Hole? There was something strange about that.”
What Hockenberry had seen was mounted cavalry—a very small troop—apparently attacking infantry. Neither the Achaeans nor the Trojans used cavalry.
“Of course,” said Mahnmut, bringing the hornet around in a swooping bank. They accelerated back toward the Hole again.
Mahnmut, are you still copying me? came Orphu’s voice on the tight-beam, relayed through the Hole by the transponders they’d buried there.
Loud and clear.
Is Dr. Hockenberry still with you?
Yes.
Stay on tightbeam then. Don’t let him know we’re talking. Do you see anything strange there?
We do. We’re going back to investigate it. Cavalry fighting Argive hoplites on the Mars side of the Brane, Argives against Trojans on the Earth side.
“Can you cloak this thing?” asked Hockenberry as they approached about two hundred feet above the dozen or so mounted figures who were approaching fifty-some Achaean foot soldiers. The hornet was still about a mile from the apparent confrontation. “Can you camouflage it? Make us less obvious somehow?”
“Of course.” Mahnmut activated full-stealth and slowed the hornet.
No, I’m not talking about what the humans are doing, sent Orphu. Can you see anything odd about the Brane Hole itself?
Mahnmut not only looked with his eyes on broad-spectrum, but he interfaced with all of the hornet’s instruments and sensors. The Brane seems normal, he sent.
“Let’s land behind Achilles and his men there,” said Hockenberry. “Can we do that? Quietly? “