Peering through the moon-silvered haze, I saw one campfire that seemed larger, brighter, than all the others. That must be where Hector’s tent is, I told myself. I headed toward it, tense with the expectation of being challenged by a sentry at any moment. I hoped I would be challenged, and not merely speared out of the darkness before any questions were asked. My senses were hyper-alert; I think I could have heard a dagger being drawn from its sheath, or seen a man stalking behind me out of the back of my head. But I heard and saw nothing. It was as if the fog had enveloped the whole camp, muffled every sound, mummified every man there except me.
The fire seemed to be growing, as if someone were feeding it, turning it from a dying campfire into a great welcoming beacon. But it no longer flickered like a fire. It was a steady bright glare, growing more brilliant by the moment. Soon it was so bright that I had to throw my arm across my brow to shield my eyes from its burning intensity. I felt no heat from it, but its brilliance exerted a force of its own. I felt myself pressed by that blinding glare, forced to my knees by its overpowering golden radiance.
Then I heard a man’s laughter, and knew at once who it was.
“On your feet, Orion!” said the Golden One. “Or do you enjoy crawling like a worm?”
Slowly I rose to my feet. The Golden One stood bathed in a warm glow that seemed to separate us from the mist-shrouded plain. It remained night beyond us. No one in the camp stirred. No sentries saw us or heard us.
“Orion,” he said, his smile mocking, “somehow you continually find ways to displease me. You saved the Achaian camp.”
“That displeases you?” I asked.
He scratched at his chin, a strangely human gesture in so godlike a person. “As Apollo, the sun god, the one who brings light and beauty to these people, I seek victory for the Trojans over these barbarians from Achaia.”
“And the other…” I groped for a word, settled on, “gods? Not all of them favor Troy, do they?”
His smile withered.
“There are others,” I said. “Godlike beings like yourself?”
“There are,” he admitted.
“Greater than you? Is there a Zeus, a Poseidon?”
“There are several… beings such as I, Orion,” he said, waving a hand vaguely. “The names that these primitive people call them are irrelevant.”
“But are they more powerful than you? Is there a Zeus? A king among you?”
He laughed. “You’re trying to find a way of fighting against me!”
“I’m trying to understand who and what you are,” I said. Which was truth, as far as it went.
The Golden One eyed me carefully, almost warily. “Very well,” he said at last, “if you want to see some of the others…”
And gradually, like a night fog slowly burning away under the morning sun, I saw images beginning to form all around me. Slowly they emerged, materialized, took on solidity and color. Living, breathing men and women surrounded me, peered down at me, inspected me as a scientist might examine some species of insect or bacterium.
“This is rash,” said one of them in a deep godly voice.
“He is my creature,” the Golden One retorted. “I can control him.”
Yes, I thought. You can control me. But one day your control will slip.
I could see dozens of faces peering at me: beautiful women with flawless skin and eyes that glowed like jewels; men who radiated youth and yet spoke with the gravity and knowledge of millennia, eons, eternity itself.
I felt like a little boy in the midst of vastly wiser adults, like a child confronted by giants.
“I brought him here from the plain of Ilios,” said the Golden One, almost as if daring them to complain.
“You grow bolder,” said the one who had spoken first. He was dark of hair and eye, as solemn as a high craggy mountain. I thought of him as Zeus, even though there were no lightning bolts in his grip and his beard was neatly trimmed and barely touched with gray.
The Golden One laughed carelessly.
Around that circle of vast unsmiling faces I searched, looking for one that would be familiar, the goddess I had loved, or even the dark Ahriman whom I had hunted. I saw neither.
One of the women spoke. “You still intend to allow the Trojans to win their war?”
The Golden One smiled at her. “Yes, even though that displeases you.”
“The Greeks have much to offer your creatures,” she said.
“Pah! Barbarians.”
“They will not always be so. In time they will build a beautiful civilization… if you let them.”
With a shake of his golden mane, “The civilization of Troy will be even more beautiful, I promise you.”
“I have studied the time-tracks,” said one of the males. “The Greeks should be allowed to win.”
“No!” shouted the Golden One. “Damn the time-tracks! I am creating a new track here, one that will please all of us, if you’d only stop interfering with my plans.”
“We have as much right to manipulate these creatures as you do,” said the woman. “I really have very little confidence in your plans.”
“Because you don’t understand,” the Golden One insisted. “I want Troy to win because Troy will then become the most important nexus in this phase of human history. The city will grow into a mighty empire that spans Europe and Asia. Think of it! The energy and vigor of the Europeans combined with the wisdom and patience of the East. The wealth of both worlds will be commingled into a single, unified Ilian empire that will span from the British Isles to the Indian subcontinent!”
“What good will that do?” asked one of the other men. Like the others, he was as handsome as a human face can be, flawless in every detail. “Your creatures will still have to face the ultimate crisis. Unity among them may be less desirable than a healthy amount of competition.”
“Yes,” said the woman. “Remember the Neanderthal-dominated track that you sent this creature to destroy. You ended by nearly destroying all of us.”
The Golden One glared down at me. “That was a mistake that will not be repeated.”
“No, not with Ahriman and his tribes safely in their own continuum now.”
“That is done and we survived the crisis,” said the one I called Zeus. “The question at hand is what to do about the particular nexus at Troy.”
“Troy must win,” insisted the Golden One.
“No, the Greeks should…”
“The Trojans will win,” the Golden One stated flatly. “They will win because I will make them win.”
“So that you can create this Ilian empire that appears to be so dear to your heart,” said Zeus.
“Exactly.”
“Why is that so important?” asked the woman.
“It will unify all of Europe and much of Asia,” he replied. “There will be no separation of East and West, no dichotomy of the human spirit. No Alexander of Macedon with his semibarbaric lusts, no Roman Empire, no Constantinople to act as a barrier between Asia and Europe. No Christianity and no Islam to fight their twenty-century-long war against each other.”
They listened and began to nod. All but the skeptical woman and the one I called Zeus.
It is a game to them, I realized. They are manipulating human history the way a chess player moves pieces across his board. And if a civilization is utterly destroyed, it means as little to them as if a pawn or a rook is captured and removed from the board.
“Does it really make that much difference?” asked one of the dark-haired men.
“Of course it does!” the Golden One replied. “I seek to unite the human race, to bring all the many facets of my creatures into harmony and unity…”