Dropping the straw, she walked slowly back to the stall door. Pausanius opened it, and she stepped out. As the locking bar fell into place, the stallion suddenly reared and lashed out. Pausanius stumbled back and almost fell.
Halysia laughed. “He will be a fine, fine horse,” she said.
“I do not know how you do that,” the old general said. “I’d swear he understands you when you speak to him.”
Outside, Halysia turned to Pausanius. “Will you ride with me, General?”
“I would be honored, my queen.” He called out to a stable boy to fetch mounts. The youngster brought out Halysia’s old bay gelding, Dancer, and a gentle swaybacked mare Pausanius had recently taken a liking to. They rode through the stable yard and down to the Seagate, overlooking the harbor. Halting their mounts on the steep rocky incline, they stared across the narrow ribbon of sea to the shore of war-torn Thraki.
Pausanius voiced the fear she felt. “If eastern Thraki falls, both the armies of the west and rebel Thrakians will arrive on that shore in the thousands.”
She turned and looked at the Seagate. Helikaon had ordered the gate towers reinforced and the stone entrance faced with green marble brought from Sparta. The steep gradient from the harbor would make it nearly impossible to force the gates. An enemy laboring up the hill would lose many men to bowmen safe on the high walls.
“With enough soldiers we could hold out for months,” she said.
The old man grunted. “Enough would be five times what we have.”
Without another word Halysia turned her horse and rode up along the narrow rocky trail around the outside of the walls, past the highest point of the cliffs, called Aphrodite’s Leap. She smiled as she thought of the old general following her. The ground was uneven, and in places the trail was so narrow that her outside foot hung over an awesome drop to the rocks below.
Pausanius did not fear the dangerous ride, but he feared for her. He could not understand her desire to take such risks. Halysia did not try to explain. Out on the plains of her youth there had been many summer fires. They would blaze in the dry grass, the winds fanning them, driving them toward the settlements. The only way to combat them was to set controlled blazes ahead of the inferno so that when the blaze reached the burned-out areas, it would have nothing to feed on and die away.
These perilous rides were for Halysia a way of containing the greater fears she suffered by enduring a lesser fear she could control.
Eventually they reached the wider path leading to Dardanos’ second great gate. The Landgate was the oldest part of the city, built by ancient craftsmen whose names were lost to history. It was a massive bastion facing south toward Troy, the walls deep and solid, the two sets of gates narrow and high. Yet the land outside the gates was wide and flat. An invading army could camp there in safety for a season and attack at will.
From the Landgate a narrow road crossed the dry plain, then dipped through a long steep defile. The two riders followed the road downward toward a deep crevice crossed by a narrow wooden bridge with a permanent guard stationed at each end. The road to Troy flowed from it toward the south. The horses’ hooves clattered on the timbers as they rode across. Halysia glanced over and down. The drop was dizzying. On the far side she reined in her mount and glanced back, marveling at the skill and courage of the men who had built the bridge. Although it was no more than three spear lengths across, it would have been no easy feat preparing the ground. Cross-timbers and joists had been set deep into the rocks below the bridge. Men would have had to hang from ropes and hack away at the stone to create deep indentations: the kind of work her brothers were famed for.
Away from the city Halysia breathed in deeply, enjoying the scent of the damp earth and the summer grass and the feel of a breeze unhindered by walls of stone. The light was beginning to fail when Pausanius said: “We should be getting back across the Folly. I have no wish to be riding the high roads after dark.”
Halysia reined in her mount. “The Folly?”
“I meant the bridge, lady.”
“Why do you call it a folly?” she asked. “It shortens the route to Troy, cutting off a day’s travel for merchants.”
“The place had the name long before the bridge was built. Only old men like me use it still. Parnio’s Folly.” Pausanius sighed. “A young rider made a wager with his friends that his horse could leap the crevice at its narrowest point. He was wrong. It took two days to bring up his broken body. A few years later the bridge was constructed above where he died.”
“You knew him?”
“Yes, I knew him. A vain and reckless boy. But there was no malice in him. He thought, as all young men do, that he was immortal. Had he lived, he would have been sixty years old now, white-haired and long in the tooth. He would have railed at the recklessness of youngsters and told us all how it was different in his day.” He glanced at the queen and smiled. “How strange it is,” he said, “that I can remember the old days so clearly, and yet I cannot recall what I had for breakfast this morning. I fear I am becoming increasingly useless, my queen.”
“Nonsense, Pausanius. I rely on your wisdom.”
He smiled his thanks. “And I rely more and more on young Menon. You will, too, when I am gone.”
“You are fond of the boy, and it shows,” she said.
Pausanius grinned. “You won’t believe it, but he looks just like me when I was young. He is a good lad. Constantly in debt, though. Loves to gamble. Which was also my curse as a youngster.”
“Will he be as truthful with me as you are?”
Pausanius’ face stiffened. “I am not always as truthful as I would wish to be. It has been bothering me of late. We are alone now, with no one to overhear. So if you will allow me, I will speak my mind.”
“I had hoped you would always feel able to do so,” Halysia told him.
“On matters martial I have. But this is not about soldiering.”
“Speak on, then, for I am intrigued.”
“You care for that wild horse, and you struggle to understand its pain and its anger. When you stroke it, the beast calms, for it senses you have affection for it. Yet there is another little horse, starved of affection, longing to be stroked and loved. And this one you ignore.”
Anger rose in her. “You of all men should understand my revulsion. The child’s father was an evil man who murdered my son and planted his vile seed in me against my will.”
“Yes, he was,” Pausanius said. “And Helikaon nailed him to the gates of his fortress to die a wretched death. But the boy is not his father. He is the son of Halysia, a queen of courage and dignity, loyalty and compassion. He has her blood and her spirit.”
Halysia raised her hand. “You will speak no more of this. You were quite right, General, to hold those views to yourself. Do so in future.”
Swinging her gelding, she rode back to the citadel.
Andromache awoke from a dream and lay still, trying to hold on to its fleeting fragments. Kalliope had been with her, and Laodike. The three of them had been sailing together on a great white ship. There were no oars or sails or any crew, yet the vessel had glided on toward a distant island, bathed in the gold of the rising sun. Andromache had been happy, her heart freed by the presence of her friends. In that moment of the dream she had not recalled the fate of the two women.
Then a fourth figure had joined them, a young, dark-haired woman of dazzling beauty. There was something familiar in her cold gaze, but Andromache had not at first recognized her.
“And here you are,” the woman told Andromache. “Sailing with those you have slain.” They were all standing very still now and staring at her. A red stain began to seep through Laodike’s pale gown, and a black-shafted arrow appeared in Kalliope’s chest. The dark-haired young woman stood before her, saying nothing. Then her skin began to age and draw tight over her face, and Andromache saw that she was Hekabe the queen.