“They will attack anyway,” Helikaon answered, “when they perceive that the time is right. And it will be while Agamemnon is still in Troy. He will want to rejoice at my death.”
The chariot clattered on through nearly empty streets. “Odysseus was there,” Gershom said. “He waved at you.”
“I saw him,” Helikaon said. “If word comes to the palace that he wishes to see me, make some excuse.”
“He is your closest friend,” Gershom said.
Helikaon did not reply. Pulling a cloth from his belt, he dabbed at his sweat-streaked face. Gershom looked closely at him. Helikaon’s color was good, his skin having lost the ashen texture it had acquired during his illness. He was close to recovery, needing only to rebuild his stamina.
The carriage moved down through the lower town until it reached Helikaon’s palace. Two armed guards stood there, drawing open the gates to allow entry. Once inside the building, Helikaon walked through to a large room and stretched himself out on a couch. A servant brought a pitcher of cool water and filled a cup for the Dardanian king. Helikaon drank deeply, then closed his eyes, resting his head on a cushion. Gershom left him there and strode through to the rear garden, where two more guards were patrolling. He spoke to them for a little while, then returned to the palace. The guards were for little more than show. It was not a building to be easily defended. There were windows on two sides leading to the streets, and the walls of the gardens were low. Assassins could force entry in any one of twenty places without alerting the sentries. And sometime during the next five days they would do exactly that. A sensible plan of action would be to leave and return to Dardania, but Helikaon would not hear of it.
Returning to the cool of the main room, Gershom saw Helikaon sitting forward, elbows resting on his knees. He looked tired and troubled.
“Why do you not wish to see Odysseus?” Gershom asked, seating himself alongside the Dardanian king.
“I will see him, but I need time to prepare my thoughts.” Idly he rubbed at the healing wound beneath his arm. Then he leaned back. “When Attalus was dying, he spoke to me. It is a strange thing, Gershom, but I think his words were more poisonous than his blade.”
“How could that be?”
“He told me Odysseus paid to have my father murdered.”
The words hung in the air. Gershom knew little of Helikaon’s past save what the sailors had spoken of. A sad and lonely childhood redeemed by two years with Odysseus on the Penelope and in Ithaka. Upon his return to Dardania his father had been murdered, and Helikaon had refused the crown, instead offering his support to his half brother, the child Diomedes, and the boy’s mother, the king’s widow, Halysia.
Assassination was common enough between rivals and enemies, but even Gershom, whose Egypteian heritage had involved little education in the ways of the sea peoples, knew that Ithaka was far distant from Dardania. There was no reason for enmity and apparently no cause for Odysseus to desire the death of the Dardanian king. Where would be the profit in it?
“Attalus was lying,” he said at last.
“I do not think so. That is why I need more time to prepare myself for a meeting.”
“What would Odysseus have gained from such an act? Was your father blocking his trade routes? Was there ill feeling from some act in the past?”
“I do not know. Perhaps when they were younger there was a feud.”
“Then you should ask Odysseus.”
Helikaon shook his head. “Not as simple as that, my friend. I swore an oath on the altar of Ares that I would hunt down and kill the man responsible for my father’s murder. If I ask Odysseus outright and he admits it to be true, then I will have no alternative but to declare him my enemy and seek his death. I do not want that. Odysseus was more than my friend. Without him I would have been nothing.”
“You loved your father?”
“Yes, though he did not return that love. He was a hard, cold man, and he saw in me a weakling who would never have the strength to rule.”
“Does anyone else know what Attalus told you?” Gershom asked.
“No.”
“Then let it go. A man who despised you died. A man who loved you lives. Surely even your gods would understand were you to renege on your oath.”
“They are not known for their understanding of mortal dilemmas,” Helikaon said.
“No,” Gershom agreed, “they are more interested in disguising themselves as swans and bulls and suchlike and rutting with mortal men and women. Or feuding with one another like children. I have never heard of such an unruly bunch of immortals.”
Helikaon laughed. “You obviously do not fear them.”
Gershom shook his head. “When you have learned from childhood of the horrors of Set and what he did to his brother, your gods seem no more worrisome than squabbling puppies.”
Filling a cup with water, Helikaon drank. “You make it sound so easy, Gershom. But it is not. I was raised to believe—as all our noble houses teach—that family and honor is everything. The unity of blood. It is what binds us together. An attack on one member of a family is an attack on all. Enemies, therefore, know that if they seek to harm any one of us, the rest will descend on them with swords of fire. Such unity offers security. Honor demands vengeance on any who seek to come against us.”
“It seems to me,” Gershom said, “that you sea people spend a great deal of time talking about honor, but strip away the high-sounding words and you are no different from any other race. Family? Has Priam not killed wayward sons? When a king dies, do his sons not go to war with one another to succeed him? Men speak of how you reacted to your father’s death. They say it was amazing, for you did not order your little brother’s execution. Your race thrives on blood and death, Helikaon. Your ships raid the coasts of other nations, stealing slaves, burning and plundering. Warriors brag of how many men they have killed and women they have raped. Almost all of your kings either seized their thrones with swords and murder or are children of men who seized power with swords and murder. So put all this talk of honor to one side. The only fact I know about your father is that he sought to dispossess you, declaring your brother to be his heir. Odysseus, you tell me, helped make you a man and asked for nothing in return. Do you see any balance, any harmony, in killing your friend to avenge the murder of an enemy? For that is what your father was to you.”
Helikaon sat silently for a while. Then he looked at Gershom. “What of your family?” he asked. “You have never spoken of them. Would you forgive the man who killed your father?”
“I never knew my father,” Gershom said. “He died before I was born. So I cannot answer your question. The fact is that you believed Attalus—Karpophorus, whatever his name was. If he was telling the truth, then it could only be a part of it. Odysseus has the other part that can make it whole. You have to talk with him.”
Helikaon rubbed at his eyes. “I need to rest, my friend,” he said, “but I will think on all you have said.”
After Helikaon had taken to his bed, Gershom left the palace building. Two men were loitering close to a well on the other side of the avenue. Gershom wandered over to them. Both were lean and cold-eyed.
“Anything?” Gershom asked.
“Three came today,” the first man answered. “They walked around the palace, staring at the windows. I followed them to the palace of Polites. They were Mykene.”
Gershom returned to the palace, moving through the lower levels and checking the locking bars on the shuttered windows. There was little point in such activity, he knew, for the shutter locks were flimsy and not intended to prevent a determined intruder. A dagger blade would lift the locking bars with little difficulty.