“Where next?” he asked now.
“We’ll sail up the coast then head west and down to the lands of the Siculi.”
“Are they allied to the Mykene?”
“No.”
“That is good. And then we head home?”
“No, first we sail north and west to the lands of the Seven Hills. It is a long journey but necessary.” He looked hard at Gershom. “What is troubling you?”
Gershom shrugged. “I am beginning to hate the word ‘necessary,’” he muttered. Then he sighed. “No matter. I will leave you to your thoughts.”
Helikaon stepped forward as Gershom swung to leave the deck. “Wait! What is happening here? A wall has come between us, and I cannot breach it. I can understand it with the other men, for I am their king and their leader, but you are my friend, Gershom.”
Gershom paused, and when he spoke, his voice was cold, his eyes hard. “What would you have me say?”
“From a friend?” said Helikaon. “The truth would be good. How can I heal a rift when I do not know what caused it?”
“And there is the problem,” Gershom said. “The man I met three years ago would have understood in a heartbeat. By the blood of Osiris, I would not be having this conversation with that man! What is wrong with you, Helikaon? Did some harpy steal your heart and replace it with a rock?”
“What is wrong with me? Has everyone been moonstruck? I am the same man.”
“How can you think that?” Gershom snapped. “We are sailing the Great Green in order to terrorize the innocent, burn their homes, kill their menfolk. War should be fought between soldiers, on a chosen battlefield. It should not visit peasant homes where people struggle daily just to fill their bellies.”
Anger swept through Helikaon. “You think I desire such slaughter?” he said. “You think I revel in the deaths of innocent villagers?”
Gershom said nothing for a moment, then drew himself up and stepped in, his dark eyes gleaming. For only a heartbeat Helikaon thought he was about to be struck. Then Gershom leaned close. Helikaon felt a shiver go through him. It was as if he were staring at a stranger, a man of almost elemental power. “What difference does your joy or guilt make to the widow?” said Gershom, his voice low but the intensity of his words plunging home like daggers. “All that she loved is still dead. All that she built is still ash. You were a hero once. Now you are killing husbands and old men and children barely old enough to lift a sword. Perhaps Odysseus will spin a tale one day about the yellow-haired child on Pylos with his little fruit knife and his gushing blood.”
The ghastly image ripped into Helikaon’s mind: the small golden-haired boy, no more than seven or eight years old, running up behind one of Helikaon’s warriors and stabbing him in the leg. Surprised and in pain, the soldier had swung around, his sword slashing through the child’s neck. As the boy had fallen, the soldier had cried out in anguish. Dropping his blade, he had taken the dying child into his arms and struggled in vain to stem the gouting blood.
Other images flowed then: women weeping over corpses while their homes burned, children shrieking in terror and pain, their clothes ablaze. Anger rose like a defensive barrier against the memories. “I did not cause this war,” he said. “I was content trading on the Great Green. Agamemnon brought this terror upon us all.”
The eyes of power did not waver. “Agamemnon did not bring death to that child. You did. I expect Agamemnon to murder children. I did not expect it from you. When the wolf slaughters the sheep, we shrug and say it is his nature. When the sheepdog turns on the flock, it breaks our hearts, for his actions are treacherous. By all that is holy, Helikaon, the crewmen are not cold to you because you are the king. Can you not understand? You have taken good men and turned them to evil. You have broken their hearts.”
With that Gershom fell silent, and his accusing eyes turned away. In that dreadful moment Helikaon understood the hatred Bias felt for him. In the old man’s philosophy, heroes stood tall against the darkness while evil men embraced it. There was no subtlety of shade, simply light and dark. Helikaon had betrayed everything his old shipmate believed in. Heroes did not attack the weak and defenseless. They did not burn the homes of the poor.
He glanced at Gershom and saw that his friend was staring at him once again. But this time the eyes did not radiate power. They were filled with sadness. Helikaon could find no words. Everything Gershom had said was true. Why had he not been able to see it? He saw again the raids and the slaughter, only this time he viewed the images with different eyes.
“What have I become?” he said at last, anguish in his voice.
“A reflection of Agamemnon,” Gershom said softly. “You lost yourself in the grand designs of war, focusing on armies and strategies, calculating losses and gains in the same way you did as a merchant.”
“Why could I not see it? It is as if I were blinded by some spell.”
“No spell,” Gershom said. “The truth is more prosaic than that. There is a darkness in you. In all of us, probably. Beasts we keep chained. Ordinary men have to keep the chains strong, for if we let the beast loose, then society will turn upon us with fiery vengeance. Kings, though… well, who is there to turn upon them? So the chains are made of straw. It is the curse of kings, Helikaon, that they can become monsters.” He sighed. “And they invariably do.”
A cool wind blew over the rear deck, and Helikaon shivered. “We will raid no more villages,” he said.
Gershom smiled, and Helikaon saw the tension ease out of him. “That is good to hear, Golden One.”
“A long time since you called me that.”
“Yes, it is,” Gershom replied.
Toward dusk a northwesterly wind began to blow, buffeting the fleet and slowing its progress. Increasing weariness took its toll on the rowers. Some of the older vessels, acquired by Helikaon from allied nations, were not as well cared for as his own galleys. They were heavily barnacled and sluggish, unable to keep up with the swifter ships. Slowly at first, the fleet began to lose formation.
Helikaon was concerned, for if the fleet were to come upon enemy vessels, the stragglers could be picked off and sunk. He had hoped to have made better progress. Without the wind against them they might have been able to make the crossing to the neutral coastline of Asia. There was no chance of that now.
As the light began to fail, Helikaon signaled for the fleet to follow him into a wide bay. This was enemy territory, and he had no idea what forces were garrisoned in the area. The danger was twofold. There could be a hostile army within striking distance of the bay, or an enemy fleet could come upon them as they were beached.
As they entered the bay, Helikaon saw a settlement far to the right and above it a hilltop fort. It was small and would hold no more than a hundred fighting men.
Eight trade vessels of shallow draft were beached close to the settlement, and already cookfires had been lit.
As the sun set, the galleys began to beach some five hundred paces from the houses. Helikaon was the first ashore, calling his captains to him and instructing them to take no aggressive action but merely to prepare cookfires and allow the men to rest. No one, he said, was to approach the settlement.
As more and more men came ashore, Helikaon spotted a troop of twenty soldiers leaving the fort and marching down toward them. They were poorly armed, with light spears and leather breastplates and helms. Helikaon saw Gershom looking at him and guessed the Egypteian was thinking of the promise he had made to raid no more settlements.
Helikaon strode out to meet the soldiers. Their leader, a tall, thin young man, prematurely bald, touched his fist to his breastplate in the Mykene manner. “Greetings, traveler,” he said. “I am Kalos, the watch commander.”