I threw my dory when I was half a pace from the faces of their aspides. My spear flew perhaps a single pace and slid between the edges of the man’s helmet, deep between his teeth into his throat. I tugged the cord, but it was gone, lodged too far.
The other front ranker lost an entire action being afraid.
I got my hand on my xiphos.
Finally, he struck — a simple, straight blow to the face of my aspis. A wasted blow. If he had been trained by Calchus he would have known what to do when a Killer of Men came and faced him. He and his friends would have set their shields together and put their spear points to my face, and driven me away or let me expend the rage of Ares on their impenetrable shields.
But I was Hector and Heracles, and they had no hero to steady them.
My long xiphos came out of my scabbard as if called by Ares. My draw lengthened into a high cover that took my terrified adversary’s spear high and then I sprayed his fingers over his companions with a flick of my wrist, and my aspis and my shoulder cast him into his own second rank, a step higher on the marble, and his blood sprayed over his friends.
They reached for me with their spear, but they also stumbled back.
And Brasidas was there.
What evil fate set those men to face me, and to face Brasidas, on the same day and in the same hour?
His sword flew like one of the ravens of Apollo, stooping and rising.
And then — I tell it because it will be difficult to believe — we drove them back from the threshold into the portico, and I have never seen it, before or since, but Brasidas’s opponent thrust, pushing forward on his right foot with his spear reversed, and while he went shield to shield with the Spartan, he was wide open to me. I had just covered a heavy, sweeping blow on my shield and I turned and killed Brasidas’s opponent with a thrust to the throat — and in that beat of the heart, Brasidas drove over my arm into my man, killing him.
My sword caught in Brasidas’s adversary, though. The swell in the ‘leaf’ of the blade had gone too deep and he took my sword in death. But Ares guided my hand and I took his spear from him as if he had handed it to me.
I ran down the hallway to the women’s quarters.
I knew it well.
And as I had imagined it a thousand times that day, there he stood.
Diomedes.
Two women dead at his feet, their young corpses piled one atop another like lovers in a tragedy.
I might have wept, but neither dead girl was mine.
He had Briseis by the hair, and he had one of her arms pinned, because it had a long curved knife. His hand held a sword — a kopis such as I had used in my youth. It was red to the hilt and for a long moment I could not tell if her throat was cut or not.
‘Stop!’ he commended me. ‘Or I kill your whore.’
I was still moving forward.
‘Kill him, Achilles!’ Briseis said.
‘Shut up, you bitch!’ he said. His grip must have hurt her terribly, but she still had the knife and he could not make her drop it — she was a dancer, fit, and flexible, and the grip that would have broken a man’s arm was hurting her terribly, but she still had the knife. And her struggles made him unable to just cut her throat.
His two men were opening the doors to the women’s yard beyond. He tried to drag her feet from under her, so that he’d have her arm and the knife, but she moved with fluid grace, despite his grip.
I saw it all, the last act of a tragedy older than me. Before I threw my spear I knew that wherever it lodged, Briseis would be the victor — alive, my bride, or dead, avenged and unbroken. Like it or not …
All her will passed to me in one glance of those eyes. When she told me to kill him, she told me all.
I turned my head slightly, as if tracking his henchman, who raised his spear to threaten me.
And then, without looking, I threw. My throw had everything behind it, and my right foot went forward, making me as vulnerable as the man I’d killed a moment before in the portico. And Diomedes’ man threw at me.
And all the gods laughed and oaths were fulfilled.
Archilogos’s shield snapped forward — and the brother and owner of my youth deflected my death.
And Diomedes stood.
Briseis was on the floor.
Diomedes stood
because
my
spear
pinned
him
to
the
door
Blood fountained over his chest from his throat, and his face distorted against my shaft. His mouth moved like a gaffed tuna, and no sound emerged.
Briseis had fallen to her hands and knees. In truth, my spear ripped along her scalp and blood flowed — but she was alive.
As fast as I could reach her side, my people butchered Diomedes’ remaining men, and Briseis was raised from the floor — I had one of her hands, and her brother had the other.
‘I came as best I could,’ I said.
Archilogos looked at me across his sister.
‘My hate for you burned hot,’ he said. ‘But now I find only ashes. Heraclitus, ere he died, told me that you tried to save my father.’
Briseis’s eye caught mine. Fear, despair, elation — they left almost no mark on her, and one eyebrow went up despite the blood. Indeed, Archilogos must have been told many times that I had tried to save his father — that I had only killed him in mercy, never in anger. But … time passes its own messages.
Brasidas said, ‘Arimnestos! We must go.’
I looked over my shoulder at him, and then at Briseis and Archilogos. ‘Briseis,’ I said. ‘Come and be my wife.’
Then she smiled, the same smile she always had when she put the knife in.
‘I want nothing else, my love,’ she said. ‘But I must have a moment, or I’ll come to you with no dowry.’
‘I would take you in your chiton,’ I said, or something equally foolish.
Archilogos shook his head. ‘She’s right, and don’t be a romantic fool. All our fortune is in this town. If Artaphernes is coming for us — we need to do some selective removals.’ He grinned.
‘Archilogos,’ I said. ‘Artaphernes will kill you. And Xerxes will do nothing to stop him. Come with me and be free.’
Archilogos paused. ‘My oarsmen will kill me,’ he said.
And he smiled.
‘You saved my life,’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘So help me carry my fortune down to the ships.’
The Wedding
But, gods of our race, hear, and regard with favour the cause of righteousness; if you refuse youth fulfilment of its arrogant desires, and readily abhor violence, you would be righteous toward marriage. Even for those who flee hard-pressed from war there is an altar, a shelter against harm through respect for the powers of heaven.
The trip home had adventures of its own and I will only mention a few. We took food in Ephesus — stripped it from a town still unaware how few we were. In fact, I confess that we stripped Diomedes’ palace and left his wife and children destitute — but un-raped and alive. We stripped the house of Hipponax, and took aboard a number of family servants and slaves. And then we sailed into a setting sun and landed a few hours later, after heavy rowing, on the beaches of Chios. Before night fell, Harpagos had gone to his sister, who looked at him dry-eyed.
‘He lived longer than I expected,’ she said. ‘So have you.’
She was never one for soft words.
And when we’d arranged for his funeral pyre, and we walked away, Briseis — her head wrapped in a bandage — took my hand in the darkness.
‘She loves you,’ Briseis said.
I shook my head. ‘I have been the death of her brother, her husband and her cousin,’ I said. ‘She loved me once.’
Briseis shrugged. ‘It is no easy thing, being the lover of a hero.’
I lacked the strength to laugh. But I caught her shoulders and kissed her.