"Harold," Chalmers chided, "surely you cannot be that ignorant."
"I don't see why not!"
Chalmers sighed. "I can see that the classics are no longer taught as they were in my day. The Iliad ends with the funeral of Hector. Troy still stands, the Horse is unbuilt, Achilles is alive."
"Well I was too busy with psychology to pay much attention to the classics. What is it, then, The Odyssey?"
"Difficult to say. That one has some flashback sequences about the Horse and the fall of ..." Their leader had stopped, Shea stopped likewise, and Chalmers bumped into Shea with a clatter of ashen shafts. Three enemy soldiers came down the street toward them, shield to shield. They were even bloodier than the man Shea and Chalmers followed, white plumes nodding from their helmets, making them appear even taller than they were, which was a head taller than the Americans, although not quite so tall as the man in the lionskin.
"Shield!" barked that worthy. Gratefully, Shea shoved it toward him. The man slipped his left forearm through a strap and grasped the handle near one edge and lifted the massive contraption as easily as if it were made of wicker. He snapped his fingers and Chalmers laid a spearshaft in the upturned palm.
"Here's a Trojan dog still alive!" crowed the warrior in the middle. "Dibs on his armor!"
The Trojan raised his spear. "Eat bronze, Danaan!" He hurled the heavy spear from a distance of twenty feet. It struck the enemy shield dead center. A fifty-caliber machine-gun bullet could not have struck harder. It plowed through bronze and hide without losing velocity, slammed into the man's breastplate, plowed through his body and out through the back-plate, knocking him back a dozen paces to fall clattering to the pavement.
"Spear!" Chalmers gave him another. Shea could only gape. The warrior on the right hurled his own spear but their guide batted it aside with his shield. It nicked Shea's ear in its whispering passage. The second spear crashed through that man and pinned him, shield and all, to the doorpost of a nearby house.
The third Greek heaved his spear almost simultaneously. The Trojan whipped out a long sword in a bronzen blur and hacked the head off the spear in flight. A second blow did the same for the Greek. The helmeted head, plumes spinning, disappeared over a rooftop as the body toppled, adding to the general mess.
Shea gave a low whistle. "This guy really knows his business!"
"A hero," Chalmers affirmed. "They usually did."
The Trojan set off again and they followed. They had to step lively to keep up with his long strides, but he really was not hurrying, considering he was fleeing from a city fallen to the foe. But then a warrior, especially a hero, Shea reflected, would never run from the enemy.
"There is something," Chalmers muttered, "decidedly familiar about that man."
"How is that possible?" Shea asked. "Nobody knows what Homeric heroes looked like, not in any detail."
"I don't know, it's just ..." He shrugged and trudged on. Chalmers only had three spears now, so they were much easier to handle. Relieved of the shield's weight, Shea was having an easier time of it as well.
"Ah, sir," he hazarded, "just where are we going?"
"To the inland gate. A little way beyond that gate lies an ancient funeral mound, and a shrine of Ceres the Bereft. There await some folk of my household, whom I must lead away from this place."
"Does that sound familiar?" Shea asked Chalmers.
"It does. Let me see ... it's been so long ..." Just then a couple more Greeks showed up and it was spear-handing time again.
By the time they reached the inland gate they were down to one spear, and the Trojan's sword was getting notched and dull. They were not alone going through the gate. A stream of people, mostly women, the elderly, children and downtrodden sorts who were probably slaves, were on their way as well. Many carried pathetic bundles of belongings, and they looked like war-stunned refugees of all times and locales.
When they were outside Shea scanned the surrounding plain with amazement.
"There's no detachment out here to bag the catch," he said. "No surrounding army at all!"
"The Greeks were too primitive for that," Chalmers told him. "The so-called siege of Troy was really no such thing. The Greeks just camped on the beach and raided the Countryside. They fought the Trojans whenever the Trojans felt like coming out to fight. They didn't even try to starve the city out or cut it off from the rest of the world. People pretty much came and went as they pleased."
"That's no way to run a war," Shea protested.
"It may be just as well that they were so naive about organized warfare, considering the level of carnage they could wreak without it."
The hero turned to gaze toward the towering wall and the city that was now little but a pillar of flame and smoke. Tears ran down his cheeks, plowing furrows in the blood, soot, and dirt and making a ghastly mud on the gorget of his armor.
"Farewell, beloved Ilium! You are fallen at last, but the gods have foretold that I shall raise a new Troy upon the banks of a foreign river, where the race of Priam shall flourish once more!" With that he turned and trudged away. Shea and Chalmers, for lack of a viable alternative, followed the broad, armored, lion-skinned back.
"I think I've got it," Chalmers said, "but I want to be sure. There were so many poems and legends from the Trojan cycle. The Iliad and Odyssey were just the most famous."
The walk was not a long one, but the sky was growing pale by the time they reached the mound. It was no small household waiting there, but a crowd of several hundred people of all ages. Some wept on the altar of the shrine, others sprawled exhausted on the mound, but most gathered beneath a large, stately cypress tree. At the base of the tree sat an elderly man, cradling in his arms an object or objects wrapped in fine cloth. The hero made his way to the old man and bowed respectfully.
"Did you find your wife, my son?" asked the old man.
"I did, father, but death had already snatched my beloved Creusa from me. In despair, I was about to throw my life away in battle with the Achaeans, but her shade appeared to me, chiding my despair and assuring me that the immortal gods had other plans for the son of Anchises. Travel far from Ilium, she said, as the gods guide you by sea, and found a new Troy whose kings shall be your own descendants. And so I returned to you. Now, we must be away, for soon the Danaans will weary of their swinish rapine and plunder. They will harness their swift horses to their chariots and scour the countryside for us."
A small boy came up and took the hero's hand. "Father, who are these strangely-dressed people who came with you from the city?"
The hero, who seemed to have forgotten them, turned and took notice. "Oh, these fellows rendered me some small service as I made my way through the city. They have earned a place in our little band, which seems to have grown."
"Yes, a great many have arrived since you went back to the city to seek your beloved Creusa," the old man said. "I had thought them a great bother, but if you are to found a new city and a new royal line, then you must have followers."
"Very well. Father, you must carry the household gods a while longer. I cannot touch them until I have purified myself of blood in running water." With that he handed his shield to a brawny youth. To Shea's amazement, he bent and tenderly lifted the old man, shifting him to a piggyback carry on the lionskin. With the boy's hand in his he raised his trumpeting voice.
"All who would come with Lord Aeneas, follow me! We go to seek our fate upon the broad breast of father Neptune!" With that he began to walk away, closely followed by his household. By ones and twos, then in small groups, the others picked up their goods and went as well.
"That's it!" Chalmers said. "This is the Aeneid! Aeneas, the last of the great Trojan heroes, fled from the burning city, carrying his aged father, Anchises, and leading his son, Ascanius. In the flight he lost his wife, Creusa, and he returned to the city to find her."